Land use in Melendiz river basin

The Melendiz River Basin is in the part of Konya and Kızılırmak in the Central Anatolian Region, Erciyes-Melendiz's Nigde and Tuz Golu. Officially, searching sector and its near environment consist of Aksaray central country, Gulagac, Guzelyurt, Ciftlik'country and Acıgol's some villages. The Melendiz River Basin has landforms that happened at the different geomorphological unities. And it has the characteristics of a water basin that is according to watershed. The basic geographical classification of the land use is of general land use, functional land use and micro land use. While the general land use refers to general functions, the functional land use give the urban and rural functions more detailly. The micro land use that refers to the urban and rural functions more detailly and currently, has been done in order to come out rather urban land use by field observations. The relation between the natural environment features and land use has been searched in the third part of our work that is called "The Land Use of Melendiz River Basin". In this context, geogoly, geomorphology, climate, hydrography, land, vegetation cover from natural factors have been studied seperatedly and how the characteristics of human geography's reflection to the space is, has been analyzed. The explanation of land use has been done by holistic view accepting each factor that effects to the land use is an independent variable. When the population of the searching sector had a tendency to increase slowly until 1955, it had dynamical increases between 1955 and 2000, after these years it has had a static tendency. The population in the basin was 72.814 in 1935 is now 324.880 almost 5 times growingly. The most important part of the searching sector from the point of population is to decrease of rural population and heap together in the urban areas. The flow of migration that happened in rural areas in 1975 have risen in 2000's and the rural population in Melendiz River Basin immigrated to the urban areas and abroad. The history of settlement in the searching sector traces to The Paloetic Age. Kucuk Gollu Mountain and its side are the areas that were the oldest settlements in the basin. Aşıklı Mound and Acem Mound that were settled, based on agriculture are among the most important Neolitic settlements in the basin. The settlement in the basin is rather colloctive settlement. On the other hand, agricultural land where is near the centre of village in the village area refers to the areas where ocur agricultural functions. Our project's last part is The Land Use of Melendiz River Basin. In this part, land use map belongs to different years have been done and the searching sector have been compared with Turkey. Fourth class land where is the most areas and appropriate for agriculture and the dry land farming on rather these areas is in the classification of land use that is most. Thus, wrong land use on this field and right use intsead of it are vital important for the population in the basin for the future. The important varieties on land use in the searching sector supervened after Mamasın Dam was built. Dry land farming has decreased and irrigated farming areas have increased. In recent years, the range of products have been different because of aggricultural and livestock support. Clover farming has been the most growing herbal product. Being a perennial plant of the clover causes areic changes in all crops Key Word: Melendiz Stream Basin, Land Use, Population, Settlement, Agriculture.