Mersin, Tarsus ve Adana Hattındaki Şehirsel Büyümenin Mekânsal Etkileri

Changes in land covers and land use are increasing along with the growth of cities. Therefore, problems such as overconsumption and exploitation of natural resources, environmental pollution, and unplanned and improper use of the land because of occupation of the space by people and their activities in urban settlements, which have a dynamic and complex structure. This study aims to explore the urbanization line between Mersin, Tarsus, and Adana, which is one of Turkey’s conurbations, to reveal the spatial changes in the context of land cover and use from 1989 to 2019; determine the direction of urban sprawl; and investigate the spatial dynamics causing these changes and conversions. In this study, six different Landsat satellite images from the last 30 years were classified using a supervised classification method, and then accuracy assessments were carried out. The results revealed that urban areas have been growing from their centers to peripheries, mainly northwards and along the linear line on the Mersin-Adana highway. Additionally, the urban areas had doubled their existing area with an increase of 16.782 hectares in the 30-year period between 1989 and 2019. The urban areas have been sprawling on agricultural lands and seminatural areas, and current projects indicate that more such areas will be destroyed in the future. All these are clear indicators of spatial consumption in the study area. ABSTRACT The continuous increase in the world’s urban population is an indicator that spatial pressure will also increase at the same rate. Along with the urbanization processes, the space requirement of the increasing population causes urban landscape changes over time, leading to other land-use changes. These changes further lead to overconsumption and exploitation of natural resources, environmental pollution, and unplanned and improper use of the land. Overpopulation in urban areas has been causing spatial changes and land-use changes by sprawling toward their peripheries over time. Remote Sensing and Geographical Information Systems technologies facilitate the analyses of spatial changes and conversions in urban areas, which are quite dynamic and complex settlements. This study aims to explore the urbanization line between Mersin, Tarsus, and Adana, which is one of Turkey’s conurbations, to reveal the spatial changes in the context of land cover and use from 1989 to 2019, determine the direction of urban sprawl, and investigate the spatial dynamics causing these changes and conversions. This study has used the satellite images of 1989, 1995, 2001, and 2007 from Landsat 4-5 TM sensor and the images of 2013 and 2019 from the Landsat 8 OLI sensor. Thus, in this study, the 30-year period in total has been analyzed. The data analyses process has been divided into three stages: preliminary preparation, classification, and accuracy assessment. The preliminary preparation process, which is the first methodological step of the study, involves the standardization of the satellite data with various sensors and bands for classification. In the second stage, the training data sets are defined by taking the CORINE land cover system as a reference source because of the segmentation process. Next, a supervised classification procedure is applied to each Landsat satellite image by using the Maximum Likelihood technique. Thus, the land cover and land-use maps of 1989, 1995, 2001, 2007, 2013, and 2019 are produced. In the last stage, accuracy assessment analyses are carried out using the stratified random sampling technique. Therefore, the study achieved above 90% overall accuracy rates and about 85% Kappa values. The findings revealed that the only land-use class that has continuously expanded in the last 30-year period is the artificial areas,