Determination of land use change in Eastern Anatolia Region using collect earth methodology

Sustainability of natural resources depends on sustainable use. Land cover concept is one of the most important parameters used to define the earth and implement sustainable development. Therefore, knowledge of land cover use and changes is important for the management of natural resources, environmental factors and results. Geographic Information Systems and Remote Sensing methods are used in determining land use/cover classes with advancing technology. These methods provide advantages in the production of time, cost, accurate and precise data. Collect Earth methodology used in this study is integrated with Remote Sensing and Geographical Information Systems. It is an open methodology for data analysis and numerical result data using medium-high resolution images together because it is also free&open source. The study area is Eastern Anatolia Region. The 11648 plot area at intervals of ~ 4000 m systematically determined in this study area. Land use and changes of these plot areas, current land use/cover trend and vegetation status have been obtained and the results for plot area have been interpolated to the whole area. In this study, the advantages of the Collect Earth methodology, that allows the determination of land cover usage changes and periodic monitoring, have been evaluated. As a result of the study, 7,85 million ha pasture area, 3,68 million ha other areas, 2,68 million ha agricultural area and 1,69 million ha forest area were detected in the Eastern Anatolia Region. Land use/cover trend is as follows; 8,42 thousand ha agricultural land to wetland, 4,21 thousand ha other land to agricultural area at the time2,8 thousand other land to settlement. Between 2001 and 2016, 147.34 thousand ha of land improvement / greening trend, 35,08 thousand hectares of land degredation/desertification trend were observed in the Eastern Anatolia Region. In addition to, Land use/cover status, change&trend, monitoring, land use/cover, tree and brush, land improvement / greening trend, land degredation/desertification trend covers and rates were calculated in this study.