Assessment of Human-Induced Effects in the Sultan Marshes (Ramsar Protection) Kayseri (Turkey)

Sultan Marshes is one of Turkey's Ramsar wetlands and has faced significant threats in recent years. Although the water was brought from other basins for restoration, observed temporal human-induced impacts and the current drought have damaged the wetland qualities of the Marshes. In this study, the temporal change of the Marshes and the human-induced effects are analyzed. Spatiotemporal surface water area (1984-2020) and whole land use changes (1990-2018) are evaluated with the temporal change of the Human Development, Global Terrestrial Human Footprint, and Ecological Footprint Indexes. The land use changes since 1990 reveal how the wetland has lost its functions. Especially between 1990-2000, the water area largely shifted into the sandy and swampy areas. In the swampy areas between 1990-2000, natural pasture formation was also observed in 2000. In addition, it is found that mining fields were constructed in the region between 1990-2000, albeit relatively small. According to the study, the most remarkable change occurred in the 1990-2000 period, considering the entire study timeline (1990-2018). In this period, there was also a transformation into irrigated agricultural lands around the national park. Moreover, there was a transformation from orchards and pasture areas to irrigated agricultural areas. When the changes in the wetland are evaluated with the human footprint data for 1993 and 2009, it was found that human impact was more substantial, especially in 1993 compared to 2009. This is in line with the continuous increase in HDI values between 1990 (0.54) and 2018 (0.81). Besides, the ecological footprint has increased since 1983. After 1983, the biocapacity in the region has steadily decreased to negative values.

Performance of ANN, SVM and MLH techniques for land use/cover change detection at Sultan Marshes wetland, Turkey

Wetlands are among the most productive ecosystems that provide services ranging from flood control to climate change mitigation. Wetlands are also critical habitats for the survival of numerous plant and animal species. In this study, we used satellite remote sensing techniques for classification and change detection at an internationally important wetland (Ramsar Site) in Turkey. Sultan Marshes is located at the center of semi-arid Develi closed basin. The wetlands have undergone significant changes since the 1980s due to changes in water flow regimes, but changes in recent years have not been sufficiently explored yet. In this study, we focused on the changes from 2005 to 2012. Two multispectral ASTER images with spatial resolution of 15 m, acquired on June 11, 2005 and May 20, 2012, were used in the analyses. After geometric correction, the images were classified into four information classes, namely water, marsh, agriculture, and steppe. The applicability of three classification methods (i.e. maximum likelihood (MLH), multi-layer perceptron type artificial neural networks (ANN) and support vector machines (SVM)) was assessed. The differences in classification accuracies were evaluated by the McNemar's test. The changes in the Sultan Marshes were determined by the post classification comparison method using the most accurate classified images. The results showed that the highest overall accuracy in image classifications was achieved with the SVM method. It was observed that marshes and steppe areas decreased while water and agricultural areas expanded from 2005 to 2012. These changes could be the results of water transfers to the marshes from neighboring watershed.