Ecological Risk Assessment and Problem Formulation for Lake Uluabat, a Ramsar State in Turkey

Abstract

Unlike the United States and the European Union, developing countries do not have sufficiently structured legal and institutional systems to apply certain environmental management tools such as ecological risk assessment. However, it is important for countries with valuable environmental and ecological resources to have appropriate tools and to strengthen their environmental management capabilities and capacities for the sake of those resources. The case study described in this paper attempts to be a case study towards developing environmental management plans, especially in developing countries. The problem formulation step of Ecological Risk Assessment applied in this study contributed to the basic elements of an environmental management plan including the following: the partnership-building process, prioritization of the problems and issues of the ecosystem, and development of the action plan. Based on the information provided by participants from a series of workshops held to develop an environmental management plan for Uluabat Lake, ecosystem risks were ranked and an action plan was formed. The results obtained with the aid of fuzzy set theory provided a base for identification of the action steps by allowing scientific information to be included in the process. The degree to which Uluabat Lake's problem formulation fits into the existing legal framework of Turkey is also analyzed in this paper.

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“…Its rich biodiversity, its location on the migratory bird route, and its vast areas of suitable habitats for many bird species makes the lake important not only for Turkey but also for Europe and the Middle East (Salihoğlu and Karaer, 2004). Furthermore in 1998, Ulua …”

“…Lake is fed principally by the Mustafakemalpaşa River from the southwest and has its only outlet in the northwest, where it drains into Kocaçay River. Deposits of incoming silt from the Mustafakemalpasa River have formed an inland delta covering an area of 3,747.6 ha that is under agricultural use (Salihoğlu and Karaer, 2004).…”

“…Although many researchers have studied Lake Uluabat from faunistic or ecological points of view at different times (such as, Barlas et al, 2005;Salihoğlu and Karaer, 2004;Kökmen et al, 2007) to date there has been almost no comprehensive study of Chironomidae communities and their relationships with the limnological parameters of Lake Uluabat. The aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between chironomids and the limnological parameters (physical, chemical and microbiological) of Lake Uluabat.…”

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“…Lake is fed principally by the Mustafa Kemal Paşa River from the southwest and has its only outlet in the northwest, where it drains into Kocaçay River. The lake has an inland delta formed through incoming silt deposits from the Mustafa Kemal Paşa Stream flowing over an area of 3,747.6 hectares that is under agricultural use (Salihoğlu and Karaer, 2004;Arslan et al, 2010).…”

Applying Fuzzy Logic to Assess Human Perception in Relation to Conservation Plan Efficiency Measures Within a Biosphere Reserve

“…Fuzzy logic (FL) is a mathematical expert system that has been used in mixed, imprecise, and uncertain environments, dealing with uncertainties expressed as interval values and fuzzy sets and its approach is based upon linguistic expressions involving input and output variables rather than numerical probabilistic, statistical, or perturbation variables (Li and Huang 2010). It has commonly been used in informatics and robotic systems and has lately become a popular tool in environmental impact studies (Bojorquez-Tapia et al 2002;Li et al 2007;Gagliardi et al 2007) and ecological and risk assessments (Adriaenssens et al 2004;Salihoglu and Karaer 2004;Gevrey et al 2006), as well as for the evaluation of tropical forest conditions (Ochoa-Gaona et al 2010) and water resources management (Guo et al 2010) having the advantage of rendering subjective and implicit decisionmaking more objective and analytical, with its ability to accommodate both quantitative and qualitative data (Ekmekçioglu et al 2010).…”