Research Information System
Macodesu 2015 (1st International Conference on Sea and Coastal Development in the frame of Sustainability, Trabzon, Turkey, 18 - 20 September 2015, vol.1, no.1, pp.750-758
Forest ecosystems provide vital values such as water production, soil conservation, biodiversity, habitat for wild life as well as timber production. Due to the increased awareness of the effects on climate change in recent years, land use/cover changes in forest ecosystems become more important for researchers to introduce the trend of increase or decrease in forest ecosystems. As an outstanding district nearby Trabzon Metropolitan, Akçaabat has been experienced those changes in recent years as the biggest district of Trabzon especially after the 1980s.
To display changes in land cover, stand type maps prepared in 1984 and 2008 were digitized and spatial database was built for nearly 32 300 ha Akçaabat Planning Unit (PU) using Geographic Information Systems (GIS). In addition, spatial data bases for two periods were used to determine temporal and spatial (number, size and spatial distributions of patches) changes of land cover using FRAGSTATS™ program. The results indicated clear changes in the temporal and spatial dynamics of land cover/forest cover. Mixed forests increased about 109.22% (4452.9 ha). Agricultural and urban areas decrease 3.07% (615,7 ha) and productive forests (crown closure > 10%) increased 46.05% (3574,6 ha). 2795 ha open stands entirely converted mostly to the productive forests from 1984 to 2008. In terms of spatial configuration, analysis of the metrics revealed that landscape structure in study area has changed substantially over the 20-year study period.