Environmental degradation and urban growth relationship: The case of Van Lake basin

This research examines the relationship between environmental degradation and urban growth in the Van Lake Basin. The water pollution of Lake Van is increasing day by day; domestic and industrial wastewater have a significant impact on this pollution. Pollution carried to the lake through rivers flowing from settlements and districts into the basin is pushing ecological damage to dangerous levels. Therefore, Van Lake's water pollution necessitates an assessment of the basin from a holistic perspective. The study is based on the boundaries of the Van Lake Basin and primarily calculates the population sizes of basin districts and, based on this, population densities. Subsequently, population and population density maps of the basin are created on a district basis, and the increase in the basin's population rates is calculated to reveal the basin's situation between 1990 and 2018. Later, using the Corine application's database, land change maps are generated. The conversion of natural areas into settlements and the resultant pollution strains the Van Lake Basin's ecological capacity. To observe urban growth between the same years, a settlement analysis of the Van Lake Basin is conducted to produce settlement footprint maps, showing the spread of settlements. The central issue of the research is to elucidate the impact of urban growth on environmental degradation. For this purpose, pollution parameters generated in rivers, water channels passing through urban settlements, and Lake Van, along with the analysis result values of these parameters, are planned to be used to create pollution maps. Analysis results are not consistently available; however, pollution maps are created throughout the basin to observe changes in selected "indicator" parameters. When selecting parameters, the European Union's Water Framework Directive (WFD) and Turkey's regulation on monitoring surface waters (YSKYY) were followed, with attention to the indicators that result in "waste" due to urbanization. In this study, pollution parameters such as zinc, manganese, cadmium, lead, nickel, coliform (E. coli), sodium, chloride, and sulfate, originating from domestic and industrial sources, are spatialized by creating pollution maps. All of these pollution parameters are anthropogenic (resulting from human activities). Based on the data obtained and research findings, a correlation between environmental degradation and urban growth is established in the Van Lake Basin.