Assessing water resources development in Turkey through geostatistical analyses

The planning, management and development of water resources, which are indispensable for mankind, are of great importance for societies. It is very important to develop water resources with sectoral forecasts such as meeting the demand for drinking and domestic water in the residential areas developed along with rapid urbanization, securing the necessary water potential for energy production and supplying the necessary water for agricultural irrigation. In the present study, spatial studies were carried out through spatial statistical analyses for exploring water resources development in Turkey against urban and agricultural land uses, which are represented by the land cover data, as well as the periodic changes experienced in these uses and also for evaluating water body potentials in conjunction with the associated changes in urban development areas and agricultural land. In the evaluations of water resources development, spatial data analysis methods and software used for spatial statistics are discussed. The statistical parameters that are utilized in generating spatial statistics are presented together with the case-study examples. Within the scope of spatial autocorrelation tests covering the calculations for obtaining summary and local statistics on Turkey, spatially distributed displays were generated benefiting from the spatial analysis software such as ArcGIS and GeoDa.