A Combined Assessment of Sea Level Rise (SLR) Effect on Antalya Gulf (Türkiye) and Future Predictions on Land Loss

Sea level rise (SLR) and its impact on coastal areas and low-lying topographies have a risk of increasing significance day by day because of its direct effect on geology, economy and urbanization, such as shoreline changes, land loss, re-planning of infrastructure and social impacts. In addition to the traditional measurement methods like tide gauges used in the past, satellite monitoring and data have enriched the scope of studies on SLR and allowed the combined analysis of different data. Antalya, located in the Mediterranean basin of Türkiye and leading in tourism revenues, is an important city where more than 2.5 million people live and are visited by over 15 million tourists yearly, creating an over 10 billion-dollar economy for the country. The effect of SLR on the Antalya Gulf was evaluated by considering five different scenarios that are expected to occur depending on carbon emission rates and SLR values varying from 100 to 500 cm. Inundated regions due to the SLR along the Antalya Gulf were determined using DEMs produced from SRTM satellite images with 30-m resolution and merged with the land use/land cover (LULC) maps acquired from ESA Sentinel-2 imagery with 10-m resolution. Sixteen settlements in the region were classified according to the predominant LULC characteristics, and the effect of SLR was evaluated. It is expected that more than 250 km² of land loss and a comprehensive shift in shoreline may occur in the Antalya Gulf within 60–80 years.