Monitoring temporal changes in forest areas: The case of Istanbul

Identifying, monitoring, and evaluating changes in forest ecosystems is a very serious task for sustainable planning and management of forests. The data obtained about the size and the direction of the changes provide important decision support for the practitioners. In this study, it is aimed to determine the temporal changes in the forest areas of Istanbul province. The study area covers the provincial borders of Istanbul within the operation area of Istanbul Regional Directorate of Forestry and extend over an area of 500 thousand hectares. CORINE land cover and forest management plan data used to determine the forest changes. Change maps and change matrices were produced by performing overlay analysis in ArcGIS. In the study, changes in 5 main land cover classes have been revealed: artificial surfaces, agricultural areas, forest areas, wetlands, and water areas. When the changes in the main land cover classes in the province of Istanbul between the years 2000-2018 are examined, it is understood that the land cover changes occurred mostly in the forest land cover class about 24000 hectares. During this period, forest areas decreased by 8.7%. It has been observed that 4.22% of these changes in forest areas were in the direction of settlement areas and 4.45 of agricultural areas. As a result, it is emphasized that sustainable forest ecosystem planning is important to disrupt the increase and growth balance in the forests. These results will be able to be used as base data for practitioners who work in planning and forest management issues.