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The spatiotemporal forest
cover changes in Köprülü Canyon National Park (1965 - 2008)
in Turkey
Uzay Karahalil*, Ali İhsan Kadioğullari,
Emin Zeki Başkent and
Selahattin Köse
Karadeniz
Technical University, Faculty of Forestry, 61080, Trabzon,
Turkey.
*Corresponding author. E -mail:
uzaykarahalil@hotmail.com or
uzay@ktu.edu.tr. Tel:
+904623772846. Fax: +904623257499.
Accepted 18
August, 2009 |
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Analyzing the historical legacy of forest structure and its
temporal changes is paramount to design future forest
management interventions in preparing an effective forest
management plan in national parks. In this study, forest
cover type maps prepared in 1965, 1984 and 2008 were
digitized using geographic information systems and spatial
database was built for nearly 36000 ha Köprülü Canyon
National Park. Spatial data bases for three periods were
used to determine temporal and spatial (number, size and
spatial distributions of patches) changes of forest
resources using FRAGSTATS™ program. The results indicated
clear changes in the temporal and spatial dynamics of land
cover/forest cover. Mixed forests increased about 151.7%
(1570.7 ha) like agricultural and urban areas 39.8% (777.5
ha) and productive forests (crown closure > 10%) increased
21.9% (2838.8 ha) too, while other open lands decreased
about 27.5% (1326.3 ha) and 459 ha pure cedar stands
entirely converted mostly to the degraded and mixed forests
from 1965 to 2008. In terms of spatial configuration,
analysis of the metrics revealed that landscape structure in
study area has changed substantially over the 43-year study
period, resulting in fragmentation of the landscape as the
total number of patches increased from 238 to 672 and mean
patch size drop from 1615.0 ha to 425.3 ha markedly between
1965 and 2008. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) coupled
with fragmentation analysis has a powerful role in analyzing
spatiotemporal dynamics of forest landscape for effective
national park planning.
Key
words:
Land cover/ forest cover change, landscape metrics, Köprülü
Canyon National Park, forest management plans. |
