Determination of Temporal Changes in Bursa Land Cover/Use with CORINE Data and Landscape Metrics

Land cover/use constantly changes due to various factors worldwide. This uncontrolled, sudden, and unconscious change can negatively affect land and water resources. In order to develop sustainable use of land and water resources and policies, it is necessary to evaluate the changes in current land cover/use, determine the causes of the change, and monitor and control possible changes. The use of remote sensing and geographic information systems methods allows for the rapid and easy detection of land cover/use changes in large areas and, therefore, the easy detection and monitoring of the changes that occur. This study aims to examine the changes in land cover/use in Bursa province in the 28 years between 1990-2018 using CORINE data. CORINE is land cover/use data based on land cover/use classification with remote sensing, geographic information systems technologies, and computer-aided visual interpretation methods. According to the research results, artificial regions are rapidly increasing throughout Bursa. The increase in artificial areas in Bursa province has been revealed to affect other land cover/use classes, primarily agricultural, forest, and semi-natural regions. Some landscape metrics were used to express and interpret land cover/use class changes numerically. In the obtained results, the changes in class patch numbers and mean patch sizes indicate fragmentation in land cover/use classes when evaluated together with the results of other landscape metrics. The analysis of land cover/use with landscape metrics allows an understanding of land change from a broad perspective