Monitoring of climate changes in ramsar areas of Turkey with remote sensing techniques

The wetlands, which cover approximately 6% of the Earth's surface, host 40% of all living species and 12% of all animal species. Wetlands of international importance, which are located on the migration routes of various bird species, provide opportunities for many endangered bird species to rest and breed. Therefore, the Ramsar Convention was signed with the aim of protecting these areas with high biological diversity and productivity and ensuring the rational use of resources belonging to these areas, and Turkey has supported this convention with 14 areas. Wetlands have many functions such as flood control, groundwater recharge, nutrient storage, climate change control, water purification, food source, and tourism activity area. However, the high temperatures resulting from climate change and other factors such as human cells also put wetlands and Ramsar areas, which have long, international layers of protection, at risk. Regular monitoring and broad temporal tracking and analyses using remote sensing techniques are fast, practical, and reliable in ensuring the protection and sustainability of Ramsar areas, enabling effective steps to be taken thereafter. The aim of this thesis is to analyze the changes in land surface temperatures of Ramsar areas from the year they joined the convention until 2020 using satellite imagery. It was observed in the areas examined at the lower basin scale that Burdur Lake, Seyfe Lake, Manyas Lake, Meke Lake, Kuyucuk Lake, and Sultansazlığı, which were most affected by climate change, experienced a decrease in water bodies and an increase in surface temperatures of dried wetlands. However, it was also found that there were extreme changes in surface temperature due to land use changes in the regions.