The project that will guide the protection of the ecosystem in Izmir's landscape planning studies

The project titled “Ecosystem Services in Landscape Planning: A Road Map in the Example of Izmir Province”, conducted by Prof. Dr. Engin Nurlu, Faculty Member of the Landscape Architecture Department of Ege University Faculty of Agriculture, was found suitable for support within the scope of the TÜBİTAK 1001-Scientific and Technological Research Projects Support Program.

Congratulating the project team by hosting them in his office, Ege University Rector Prof. Dr. Necdet Budak said, “Our fully accredited, student-focused, research university continues its leadership in various programs of TÜBİTAK. Ege University, not breaking the tradition of the last six years, has become the state university that received the most project support in the projects proposed to the TÜBİTAK Research Support Programs Presidency. One of these accepted projects was the project prepared by the scientific team led by Prof. Dr. Engin Nurlu, a faculty member of the Landscape Architecture Department of our Faculty of Agriculture. We will continue to strengthen our sustainable research and science production ecosystem by turning it into a culture at our university and to work hard to make the Century of Turkey the Century of Turkish science. I congratulate our scientific team and wish them continued success.”

The project manager Prof. Dr. Engin Nurlu, who provided information about the content of the research, said, “The concept of ecosystem services, which expresses all the benefits that ecosystems offer to people, provides us with the most basic information that can shed light on landscape planning and management studies today. The relationship between land use/land cover (LULC) change and ecosystem services depends on multi-faceted spatial and temporal relationships. Revealing and understanding this relationship is very important in terms of making conscious planning and management decisions that balance sustainable development with the protection and development of ecosystem services and promote sustainability and resilience in the face of environmental challenges. In this context, the main purpose of the project is to evaluate the effects of land use/land cover (LULC) changes caused by various policies, plans and investments on ecosystem services and to create a roadmap with a methodological approach for the effective management of competing land demands for the future.”

  “4 different LULC scenarios will be created for Izmir in 2040”

Prof. Dr. Engin Nurlu said, “With the project, the effects of LULC changes caused by different policies, plans and investments between 1990-2020 on ecosystem services will be evaluated in the example of Izmir province, LULC and ecosystem service models will be created for 2040, and spatial strategies and solutions will be determined together with stakeholders for effective management in the future. Various open access data will be processed, analyzed and evaluated with remote sensing, geographic information systems and statistical tools in the project. For this purpose, LULC will be mapped between 1990-2020 in the whole of Izmir province, 4 different LULC scenarios will be created for 2040, 4 basic ecosystem services will be modeled for 2020 and 2040, and the relationship between environmental variables and ecosystem services will be determined through the multiple ecosystem service index and LULC changes. In the final stage, approaches will be developed for integrating stakeholder views into spatial strategies and solutions with a participatory mapping approach in strong and weak regions in terms of multiple ecosystem services.”

“It will contribute to the goals of our country's 12th Development Plan”

Stating that the project will have original outputs, Prof. Dr. Engin Nurlu said, “Spatial models will be produced to understand how the changing LULC pattern affects ecosystem services with innovative and comprehensive methods. It will be investigated how multiple ecosystem service assessment can be integrated into multi-sectoral decision-making processes in Türkiye. By revealing the effects of conflicts between different LULC classes on ecosystem service provision, a basis will be presented that will provide information for the evaluation of the effectiveness of different planning and management strategies and adaptive management practices.” Stating that the prepared project will contribute to the “3.4. Disaster-Resilient Living Areas, Sustainable Environment” target of the 12th Development Plan, Prof. Dr. Engin Nurlu stated that the project is compatible with the “Environmental Protection”, “Regional Development” and “Rural Development” objectives, policies and measures.

Multidisciplinary project team

In the project carried out by Prof. Dr. Engin Nurlu, Faculty Member of the Landscape Architecture Department of the Faculty of Agriculture of Ege University, the researchers are Aydın Adnan Menderes University, Faculty Member of the Landscape Architecture Department of the Faculty of Agriculture, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Ebru Ersoy Tonyaloğlu, İzmir Democracy University, Faculty Member of the Landscape Architecture Department of the Faculty of Architecture, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Birsen Kesgin Atak, İzmir Democracy University, Faculty Member of the Management Information Systems Department of the Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences, Dr. Lecturer Can Saygıner, and Ege University, Faculty Member of the Landscape Architecture Department of the Faculty of Agriculture, Research Assistant Diba Şenay.