determination of the impacts of land use change on water basin using remote sensing and geographical information system

The population has been increasing as a result of mass immigration in Istanbul. An urbanization process continues and it causes serious increases in urban areas while decreasing the amount of natural environment. This uncontrolled and illegal urbanization accompanied by insufficient infrastructure has caused degradation of cropland and forested areas in the metropolitan area, especially in water basin area. The watershed basins inside the metropolitan area have accelerated the land-cover changes, which have negative impacts on water quality of the basins. The Terkos water basin, one of the seven water basins of Istanbul providing drinking water, was selected as a study area. In order to understand the effect of the land use change of the water basin in Istanbul Metropolitan Area, we used the three Landsat satellite images in 1995, 2005 and 2010 years. The study mainly focuses on the acquisition and analysis of Landsat TM satellite images reflecting the significant land-cover changes between the years of 1995 and 2010. These findings the fact the settlement areas happened mainly on the protection zones of the Terkos basin and created serious environmental problems. The land use change will effect precipitation change on direct surface runoff in water basin.