3D coastal erosion analysis of Kilyos - Karaburun region using multi-temporal satellite image data

Istanbul, an important cultural and historical city of the world, is the most crowded metropolis of Turkey that has been expanding, especially in the east-west direction. The coastal zone in this direction has considerably changed due to open mining activities since 1980. Forest areas and sand dunes have been destroyed by open mining activities performed due to lack of environmental precautions. As a result of filling of the sea with materials extracted from open mining areas, ecosystem and topographic structure were totally damaged. In this study, the coastal changes that occurred in the selected region being under the influence of human-induced activities and coastal erosion along the West Black Sea Coast of Turkey in the vicinity of Istanbul are analyzed by using the surface profiles generated through utilizing Landsat satellite images belonging to various years, together with bathymetric and standard topographic maps of scale 1/25 000. The findings are investigated in detail for each transect, and, consequently, it has become clear that severe changes have occurred within 1984 and 2001. The sea had been filled with the excavated material from the open mining areas from 1984 till 1992, however, the trend reversed afterwards till 2001. That coastal erosion had been highly experienced, and materials filled in the sea environment had been lost.