Research Information System
Oxidation Communications, vol.1-II, no.39, pp.685-698, 2016 (SCI-Expanded)
According to the European Landscape Convention, each contracting country, ratified the ELC, is responsible for integrating its landscape protection, planning and
management strategies into other sectoral plans such as urbanisation, agriculture and
forestry. Purpose of this study is to develop sector-based (agriculture, forestry and
urbanisation) ecological landscape guides by evaluating natural and cultural landscape
components of the region of Sugla lake located in Turkey. Major objectives of the
study include: determination of natural and cultural landscape characteristics and
analysis of the functions (e.g. erosion process, infiltration, habitat and biodiversity). A
range of dataset (e.g. geological and coordination of information on the environment
land cover maps and questionnaire) was used to conduct the study. Method of the
study consists of three stages: inventory, analysis and assessment. Major natural (e.g.
flora and habitat distribution) and cultural (e.g. historical important areas and cultural
heritage) landscape components of the region were identified and mapped in the first
stage. Natural (erosion process, infiltration and biodiversity) and cultural (e.g. cultural
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heritage) landscape functions, which form the basis of the sector-based ecological
landscape guides, were analysed and mapped by adapting a landscape ecology-based
approach in the second stage. The ecological landscape guides for forest, agriculture
and settlement sectors were determined by overlapping the delineated maps (e.g. erosion risk, infiltration and habitat) in the final section. We hope that the sector-based
ecological landscape guides can be an effective tool particularly in the management
of natural resources embedded in each sector by policy makers.
Keywords: ecological landscape guide, landscape planning, Sugla lake, Turkey