Spatio-temporal analyses to monitor the impact of population on land use: Urban and forest areas in selected districts of Istanbul

The balance between the population distribution and the land consumption is vital, however is difficult to maintain due to ever increasing population in cities. Furthermore, in order to achieve sustainable development goals, the land consumption should be constraint for green areas such as forest. To assure the balance, the relation between the population and land consumption should be monitored that is also one of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). Within this paper, two indicators that are a)finding the forest area as a proportion of total land area and b)land consumption rate to population growth rate are measured for the years 2007 and 2014 and results are analyzed within a spatial information science framework. Via using high resolution spatial data, these metrics can be monitored and evaluated precisely, where the distribution of these metrics could be presented spatially. According to the achieved results, both the rate of population and the urban areas has increased within the selected years, while forest areas decreased. Change in values and locations could be observed and presented spatially. In order to test these concepts several districts at the European side of Istanbul were selected, since these areas presented an enormous growth after the planning/construction of the bus rapid transit system. Using the proposed framework, the land consumption requirements of increasing population within the selected area of Istanbul, could be planned, monitored and controlled via fulfilling the requirement of sustainable development goals.