Hydrologic and topographic parameter determination of the watersheds -A case study from Turkey

In this study, topographic, hydrologic and land use/cover parameters of Melen Watershed, Turkey, were determined using remote sensing and GIS techniques. Melen Watershed located in Duzce Province supplies an important amount of water demand of the megacity Istanbul. Initially, height, slope and aspect maps of the watershed were determined using ASTER GDEM v2 DEM data. Then, flow accumulation, flow direction and synthetic drainage network information were extracted using a hydrologic modelling tool in GIS environment. All these data were used to determine sub-basin characteristics of the watershed and three sub-basins were extracted with their boundary vector data. Lastly, land use/cover maps of the basin were produced from 2010 and 2015 dated Landsat satellite images multi-Temporally using supervised classification method. The study aims to provide basic geospatial data on the watershed of concern that may further be used in the watershed modelling studies and in defining the watershed according to its characteristics.