Mapping availability of sea view for potential building development areas

Abstract

Scenic attraction can be regarded as one of the most important factors for recreation- and/or tourism-oriented landscape planning and management processes. Sea view is generally one of the most predominant scenery components of coastal landscapes. Therefore, presence and degree of its availability contribute to scenic attraction of residential development sites. This attribute of the environment can be quantified by GIS-based visibility analyses that rely on multiple viewshed calculations, during which observation and/or target locations are taken as variables. The main aim of this paper is to analyze availability of sea view for currently undeveloped (i.e., non-built-up) areas in an urbanized coast in the Mediterranean region of Turkey. Four study sites (sites 1-4) of varying geomorphological and built-up features, located approximately 40 km south of the city of Mersin, were taken into consideration. Multiple viewshed analyses were performed using a high-resolution terrain model and 541, 533, 540, and 532 observation points for the sites, 1, 2, 3, and 4, respectively. Impact of topography and built-up features on sea visibility was discussed in the light of visibility information classified as percentage visibility of the sea surface available from each of the sites.

Detecting Coastal Urbanization and Land Use Change in Southern Turkey

“…Tourism is one of the main drivers for development on the coast. One of the easily recognizable impacts of building development on the coast is the change of visibility in coastal landscapes (Alphan, Sonmez 2015;Musaoglu et al 2004). However, many other direct or indirect impacts such as those that are caused by land-based pollutants carried into the Mediterranean coastal zone also exist.…”

“…Several authors adopted this approach as an image enhancement procedure using multispectral and panchromatic images from the same remote sensing platform such as SPOT (Shaban, Dikshit 2002) or IRS (Ahmad, Singh 2002). Several other authors also merged SPOT with Landsat images (Nunez et al 1998(Nunez et al , 1999Zhou et al 1998;Hosomura, Katho 1998;Aiazzi et al 1996;Chavez et al 1991;Wu et al 2004) As summarized above, urban development attracts attention as it is an important environmental indicator, which can be taken into consideration in environmental planning and management processes (Alphan, Sonmez 2015;Hepcan 2013;Salvati, Sabbi 2011;Miralles i Garcia 2007;Prem 2007). Datasets and analysis protocols for analyses are dependent upon both planning needs and landscape characteristics.…”

“…Residential building development is an important phenomenon along the coast. This is mostly driven by tourism-and recreation-related reasons that have created very dense vertical development of large multi-storey buildings since 1980s (Alphan, Sonmez 2015). This part of the Turkish Mediterranean coast is highly accessible by highways from populated Mediterranean and Southeast Anatolian cities such as Adana, Kahramanmaraş and Gaziantep.…”

A call for viewshed ecology: Advancing our understanding of the ecology of information through viewshed analysis

“…sites had significantly larger viewsheds compared to random locations; Marsh & Schreiber, ), or by the degree to which locations allowed inter‐visibility between sites (Wright, MacEachern, & Lee, ). In the present, decisions on infrastructure siting are also influenced by human visibility, and viewshed analysis, for instance, is used to either minimize the visual impact of large infrastructure (Griffin et al., ), or to find building locations that offer highly valued views to its future inhabitants (Alphan & Sonmez, ). However, despite the technical methods used to generate and analyse viewsheds maturing, they have, to date, seen very limited use in ecological research.…”

Land Use and Land Cover Changes Using Spot 5 Pansharpen Images; A Case Study in Akdeniz District, Mersin-Turkey

“…The district is an area that experienced a fast increase of urban population in the recent decades in Mersin (Report, 2016). Rapid urbanization and industrialization have important effect on natural resources, agricultural fields and urban environment (Alphan, 2013;Alphan and Sonmez, 2015;Burak et al, 2004). The remote sensing technique using satellite imagery has been recognized as an effective and powerful tool in monitoring and detecting land use and land cover changes.…”