Large-scale earth observation and monitoring of riparian zone land-cover changes in Türkiye

Abstract Riparian zone ecosystems provide various ecological and societal benefits and play a vital role in preserving biodiversity in fragmented landscapes. These ecosystems land use changes serve as reliable indicators of large-scale ecological system changes. The aim of this study is to monitoring the changes in land use and land cover in riparian zones and how this affects ecosystem services at the Türkiye scale. Many open source platforms that integrate remote sensing and geographic information systems have been frequently used in regional and national scale land monitoring studies in recent years. For this study, Collect Earth, an open source program authorized by the Food and Agriculture Organization, was chosen. Collect Earth is a tool that enables data collection for land monitoring via Google Earth technologies. Analysis indicates that only 2.7% of Türkiye's zones of riparian which is experienced land use changes from 2000 to 2023. While there was a decline in forest land, grassland, and cropland, there was an increase in wetland, settlement, and other land types within Türkiye's riparian zones. Logging, crop cultivation, and road construction are the main drivers of land cover change in these areas. Approximately half of the increase in riparian zones was attributed to cropland expansion. It is crucial to emphasize the importance of integrating the carnage statistics of land use change statistics with areas of gain loss to assess the land capacity of land to provide services of ecosystem. The Collect Earth methodology can aid in evaluating environmental policy objectives and assisting in the riparian zones of regional management and planning.