Sazlidere Watershed, Istanbul, Turkey: Land use change and water quality

Increased urbanization is a global problem and a form of environmental change that impacts directly on the day-to-day lives of people. The City of Istanbul is one of the top 25 crowded metropolitan cities in the world and Sazlidere Dam is one of the major drinking water reservoirs of the Istanbul Metropolitan City. In this study, remote sensing (RS) with computer-based Geographic Information Systems (GIS) techniques are used as a tool for monitoring the water basin area and water quality of the catchment of the metropolis drinking water dam reservoir named Sazllidere. For this aim, the satellite data of IRS-LISS of 2000 and Landsat-5 TM of 2004 are used for urban analysis and water quality. RS data were converted into UTM coordinate system and image enhancement and classification techniques were used. To analyze the study area on protected water basin zones by using GIS raster data was converted to vector data. Finally land use change of the watershed and water quality of the lake is analyzed and presented in this paper.