land use/cover changes in Cavusbasi

ABSTRACT: Rapid land use / cover change has taken place in Asian side of Istanbul such as Cavusbasi over the past 40 years due to rapid population growth, accelerated urbanization and degradation of forest and green areas. In this study, remote sensing and geographic information system (GIS) techniques were used in order to determine land cover change of study area using multitemporal remotely sensed data. Corona, Landsat 5 TM, Landsat 7 ETM, and Spot 5 images were used for in the study and all of these images were transformed into the UTM coordinate system. After geometric correction of this data set, Corona image was level sliced and Landsat 5 TM, Landsat 7 ETM and Spot data were classified using ISODATA technique. Obtained results were compared with each other and visualized in Geographic Information System. The results demonstrated that while the area of forest decreased around 1188 ha, area of others increased about 1192 ha between the year of 1960 and 2002.