J. D. Sauerländer's Verlag, Bad Orb

Rapid and uncontrolled industrialization in an area and related population growth require fast assessments for the actual land-cover/land-use (LC/LU) maps and related practices, in order to avoid the overuse and damaging of the landscape beyond sustainability. Growth of industry, brings an increase in population beyond its needs, increasing the housing demands. All these may cause the loss of vegetation cover in the region, mostly of forestry and grassland in the present case (Yildirim et al., 1997, 2002). Modern remote sensing and geographic information system (GIS) technologies fit well for the evaluation and long term monitoring of such effects. In the present case, a region of Gebze County (Kocaeli-Turkey), 50 km east of metropolitan Istanbul is considered as a pilot site for long term monitoring of such rapid changes and their effects on the vegetation cover and environment. The region is observed between 1985–2005, by satellite images and quantified the LC/LU changes. Comparisons were then made among the observed patterns over these years and also between images and the land-use patterns projected by the government planning offices carried out in the region in the start of the interval considered. The LC/LU patterns quickly overshot the planned industrial and settlement areas in much less than a decade. The research work also includes an interval just before the 17 August 1999 Marmara Earthquake devastated the dwellings and roads in the area to a large extent. Therefore, the results could also be used, for a comparison of before and after-earthquake inventories in many areas. The results in 2005 were indicative of rather fast recovery of the region from the negative effects of earthquake, in many respects. Further, a projection from the observed trends to the year 2010 (the next 5 years) was also made: Industrial areas are expected to increase to about 25% of all the total land area, from a start in 1986, of 2.4% to a 9% in a decade. Forests, although constitutionally protected, also may reduce to 20% (from a starting value of 30%). However the main loser among vegetation cover types was the pasture, which started at 39% in 1986 and is reduced to 5% in 2005. Extrapolation to 2010 is indicative of the possibility that no pasture area would be left in the region.

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