Investigating the spatiotemporal changes of land use / land cover and ecosystem services over three periods in yuvacik

Abstract

This study was carried out to map out to analyze the spatial and temporal change of forests ecosystem services in 1972, 2004 and 2015 of Yuvacık Planning Unit. GIS techniques and ArcGIS 10.3TM was used to determine the total area of stands to be analyzed for targeting spatiotemporal dynamics of field study. The spatial and temporal parameters of and forest ecosystem services such as land use/land cover change, crown closure, soil loss, water production, carbon storage, fire sensitivity index and biodiversity were analyzed over 43 years. The private and cadastral forests occurred as new types of land use while coppice forest, oak stands were disappeared and 99% of open lands were change into residential areas and the forest cover increased in Yuvacık PU and it has 12092.1 ha total area due to tree species maps. Degraded and mixed forests were progressively decreased and in additional Beech pure stands were remained strong among other pure stands. Forest in Yuvacık PU were in type of dense forest increased up to 42 % (5194.9 ha) from 1972 to 2015 and mature trees climbed delicately (2548 ha) due to development stage "cd" in the same period. The carbon storage in above and below ground of forest ecosystems was 1071.3 Gg in 1972, 1122.8 Gg in 2004 and 1090.6 Gg in 2015 with the carbon density rate 100 to 300 Mg/ha. Moreover, the soil loss declined from 1,1 billion ton y-1 to 108,549 ton y-1 and water produced decreased slightly from 1,8 billion to 272 million m3 y-1 between 1972 and 2015. Afterward, Yuvacık forest management planning unit were classed in 2nd class of high wildfire vulnerability with respectively FSI of 6.13, 5.99 and 6.30. In addition, due to biodiversity index rate dedicate the well growth of Yuvacık forests.