Mapping and monitoring of coastal wetlands of Cukurova Delta in the Eastern Mediterranean region

The aim of this research was to link vegetation characteristics, such as spatial and temporal distribution, and environmental variables, with land cover information derived from remotely sensed satellite images of the Eastern Mediterranean coastal wetlands of Turkey. The research method was based on (i) recording land cover characteristics by means of a vegetation indicator, and (ii) classifying and mapping coastal wetlands utilizing a Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) image of Cukurova Deltas in Turkey. Vegetation characteristics of various habitats, such as sand dunes, salt marshes, salty plains and afforestation areas, were identified by field surveys. A Landsat TM image of 4 July 1993 was preprocessed and then classified using the Maximum Likelihood (ML) algorithm and Artificial Neural Networks (ANN). As a result of this supervised classification, the land cover types were classified with a largest accuracy of 90.2% by ANN. The classified satellite sensor imagery was linked to vegetation and bird census data, which were available through literature in a Geographical Information System (GIS) environment to determine the spatial distribution of plant and bird biodiversity in this coastal wetland. The resulting data provide an important baseline for further investigations such as monitoring, change detections and designing conservation policies in this coastal ecosystem.