Spatio-temporal analysis of urbanization related land use/cover dynamics using satellite imagery: Case study antalya, Turkey

Antalya is the ninth largest city in Turkey with the area of around 20 815 km2 and a population of 1 978 333 (2010). In 1985, the population was only 891 1437; however, it has more than doubled in the last 25 years. The city is one of the most popular and important tourism centers of the country. Thus, there are significant land use/cover changes due to rapidly increased population and tourism activities. In this study, the effects of urban sprawl over land use/cover dynamics of Antalya were investigated in terms of spatial and areal changes using multitemporal satellite imageries. Landsat 5 TM images for 1984, 2001 and 2010 were used to quantify the land use/cover changes with unsupervised classification process. Topographic parameters such as aspect and slope were produced from ASTER GDEM data. Classified images were converted into the vector format and relationship between land use/cover changes and spatial-topographic characteristics of the area was determined. Classification results showed that settlement areas heavily increased towards to the northwest of the city within the 25 year period resulting in conversion of agricultural areas into urban In addition to these changes considerable coastline changes were also determined.