Spatiotemporal changes of land use patterns in high mountain areas of Northeast Turkey: a case study in Maçka

Abstract

High mountain forests (HMFs) have an important significance in forest ecosystems, but the benefits from such ecosystems have been compromised in recent years. In Turkey, HMFs constitute significant portions of Turkish forests because they cover 4% of Turkey; 15% of all Turkish forest areas are HMFs. The Eastern Black Sea region has a particular importance for HMFs due to its biological diversity and the rich presence of endemic species. This study analyzes the changes in spatial and temporal patterns of forest cover in HMF from 1973 to 2008 in the town of Maçka, which is located at the center of the Eastern Black Sea region of Turkey. The spatial and temporal change patterns of land use are quantified by interpreting spatial data. Remote sensing (RS), geographical information system (GIS), and a spatial pattern analysis program for categorical maps (FRAGSTATS) have been used for data collection, analysis, and presentation. The results showed that the HMF areas had biphasic growth from 1973 to 2008. Despite a net increase of 200.6 ha in forested areas between 1984 and 2008, there was an overall decrease from 1973 to 2008. The annual percentage of forestation for the forest areas within the study period was 0.04% in Maçka. The amount of aggregated forest area fragments rose from 388 in 1973 to 711 in 2008. The increase in the HMF of Maçka can be explained to some extent by the change in the demographic structure of Maçka and its plateaus, which contributed to changes in the daily life of the population of Maçka and its villages, such as changes in annual incomes, their lifestyles, decrease in transhumance and stockbreeding, decrease in the time of dwelling on the plateaus, and changes in the traditional architectural style.

A Review of Changes in Mountain Land Use and Ecosystem Services: From Theory to Practice

“…Turning to the question whether ecosystem service assessments can contribute to the planning and decision-making process by meeting the requirements and interests of targeted stakeholders, it is known that assessing ecosystem services can underpin planning and decision making at different stages, and recent studies cover an entire gradient of perspectives from informing, assisting and providing support to confirming and validating planning and policy measures. Thus, such assessments can inform land use planning [100,121,122] or provide input into management decisions in high-risk mountain areas [16,123]. The influences of historical/temporal [123,124] and Turning to the question whether ecosystem service assessments can contribute to the planning and decision-making process by meeting the requirements and interests of targeted stakeholders, it is known that assessing ecosystem services can underpin planning and decision making at different stages, and recent studies cover an entire gradient of perspectives from informing, assisting and providing support to confirming and validating planning and policy measures.…”

“…Thus, such assessments can inform land use planning [100,121,122] or provide input into management decisions in high-risk mountain areas [16,123]. The influences of historical/temporal [123,124] and Turning to the question whether ecosystem service assessments can contribute to the planning and decision-making process by meeting the requirements and interests of targeted stakeholders, it is known that assessing ecosystem services can underpin planning and decision making at different stages, and recent studies cover an entire gradient of perspectives from informing, assisting and providing support to confirming and validating planning and policy measures. Thus, such assessments can inform land use planning [100,121,122] or provide input into management decisions in high-risk mountain areas [16,123].…”

Dynamic Changes Analysis and Hotspots Detection of Land Use in the Central Core Functional Area of Jing‐Jin‐Ji from 2000 to 2015 Based on Remote Sensing Data

“…LUCC, therefore, has been a heated topic for geoscience [8] and also a core subject cosupported by International Geosphere Biosphere Programme (IGBP) and International Human Dimensions Programme (IHDP). The high precision land use dynamic change detection can provide basic data for the research of interaction relationship between human being and the nature [9][10][11][12][13].…”

Analysis of Land Use Change and Forestation in Response to Demographic Movement and Reduction of Forest Crime

“…In these studies, land-use/land-cover change (Sancar et al,. 2009;Özen Turan et al, 2010;Şen et al, 2015), forest dynamics (Başkent & Kadıoğulları, 2007;Günlü et al, 2009;Kadıoğulları, 2013;Padilla et al, 2010;Kadıoğulları et al, 2014), forest succession (Terzioğlu et al, 2009;Terzioğlu et al, 2010), spatial changes of land-cover types (Özen Turan et al, 2010;Paudel & Yuan, 2012;Meneses et al, 2017), population growth (Bewket, 2002), pasturing (Calvas et al, 2013), urbanization (Dewan et al, 2012;Alphan & Nil, 2016;Alphan, 2017) and global market forces (Beilin et al, 2014) have all been examined by researchers. In these studies, many references such as satellite images and forest-management plan maps have been used.…”