GIS based documentation of the monumental tree inventory in Istanbul

The monumental trees are the natural heritages that must be preserved carefully. They have non-customary dimensions of their species in terms of age, diameter and length and they have a special place in the local folklore, culture and history. These trees have such a long life to communicate between the past and the present. For this reason, documentation of monumental trees requires technical and rational planning, and management. The creation of the database with the help of GIS, and the examination of these data are important for the future of the monumental trees. There are 554 monumental trees in Istanbul and the data was provided by Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality. In this study, semantic analyzes were performed to classify the trees according to their species, age, height, body diameters and circumference. The SRTM (Shuttle Radar Topography Mission) maps were used to get elevations of trees because there are no elevation values for trees on the obtained data. This study is a preliminary GIS based documentation of the monumental trees in Istanbul. There are 311 trees in Anatolian side and 243 in European side. The districts with the most monumental trees are Beykoz with 119 trees, Usküdar with 115 trees and Sariyer with 87 monumental trees. The average height of the monumental trees is 52 meters; besides, the tree at the highest elevation is calculated as 238 meters and the lowest elevation is 2 meters. There are 46 different monumental tree species, and Platanus orientalis is the most common one with 173 units.