04 
THE IMPORTANCE OF TIME DIMENSION IN THE VECTOR-BASED TURKISH 
FOREST INFORMATION SYSTEM 
O.Y. Yılmaz 
IU, Forest Engineering Faculty, 80895 Bahcekóy Istanbul, Turkey 
yilmazy@istanbul.edu.tr 
KEY WORDS: GIS, spatiotemporal, mapping, updating, versioning, forestry 
ABSTRACT: 
À new era has been started in urban and natural resource management when GIS (Geographic Information Systems) was put in use 
in Canada in 1971. Although, it was not possible to store and update the data desirably in the early times due to the deficiencies in 
computer hardware and software, those tasks that were difficult and time-consuming to fulfill by traditional techniques began to be 
performed in a faster, easier, and more reliable way because of recent developments in those areas. The recent development in 
computer hardware and software offer new possibilities to update temporal changes in geographic data and roll-back inquiries. 
Temporal changes have important roles in managing and planning dynamic systems such as forests. By means of GIS, these changes 
can be offered to forestry technicians and managers as a tool for planning and managing the Turkish forest resources in a more 
scientific way. Moreover, to use GIS would make it possible to control all the work backward in a reliable, fast and confidential way. 
This project aims to examine the capability boundaries of *Vector-based Temporal Forest Information System Prototype". For this 
purpose, a prototype of forest information system was developed for a selected area, and possible changes in geographic objects in 
time were explored through various scenarios. Queries were performed into those temporal changes, which sets an example for the 
hereafter applications. In the recent years, there has been an intensified effort to establish a system of forest resources management 
in Turkey. However, these efforts underestimate importance of the time dimension, which this paper argues as central in the forest 
information system developments. According to this paper, unless time dimension is taken into consideration seriously, it would be 
very costly to correct mistakes made afterwards. 
1l. INTRODUCTION Chief Unit in terms of aspects, slopes, and silvicultural 
treatments in the last 40 years?". 
Nowadays, one of the most important application areas of 
GIS is forestry. Using GIS in forestry applications offers new Temporal GIS offers great possibilities to modeling 
possibilities in data analysis. Due to image processing and complicated ecological systems such as forest and technical 
photogrammetric system has been integrated in GIS these works in forestry. It is also possible nowadays to evaluate 
possibilities are increased (Persson and Janz 1997) As a temporal GIS data with either integrated to GIS software or 
result, it is possible to make reliable and quick spatial self-executed statistics, geostatistics, and simulation software 
analysis and to store the data in a database and be able to use and these evaluations would be made great contribution to 
it whenever it is needed. Beside this spatial analysis, it has forest sustainability efforts. Thus, GIS not only provides 
been recognized that time related data offer many advantages monitoring of forest economically but also protects this 
and new researches in this subject has been carried out. resource by taking preventive measures. 
However, in the beginning geographic objects were 
processed only in spatial and attribute dimensions and time This paper presents the results of the project, “Developing 
dimension was not process or store due to deficiencies of Vector Based Forest Information System Prototype”, 
hardware and software. (Peuquet 2001; Renolen 1997; Faria supported by Istanbul University Research Foundation were 
eLal. 1998; Gorolwalla et.al. 1997; Tryfona 1998). given. The project aims to identify the importance of time 
dimension in GIS and possibilities offered by temporal GIS 
One of the base goals of GIS is monitoring and analyzing in creating, storing, updating, displaying, and analyzing 
changes in spatial information. Non-temporal GIS has temporal data; results of project 
considered the snapshot of geographic object and not deal 
with the temporal status. But temporal GIS has offered 
monitoring temporal changes in geographic object by storing 2. METHODS 
temporal data. Thus, it became possible to provide answers to 
the queries; “Where and when did change occur?”, “What 2.1. Data Used 
types of change occurred?", *What is the rate of change?", 
“What is the periodicity of change?" (Langran 1993). In this 1/25000 scale topographic and 1/25000 scale forest 
management maps (year:1964,1983,1995) of the Canakkale 
Because forestry applications are based on the living objects Regional Forest, Bayramig District Forest Directorate, 
they have changed and developed continuously, analysis of Karakôy Forest Chief Unit were used. 
time related information has an important role in evaluating 
the past applications and preparing future plans. After time The project area ranges between 39 53 24 — 39 45 48 
dimension has integrated into GIS, it became possible to latitudes and 26 41 15 — 26 56 21 longitudes. 
carry out analysis easily and quickly based on time and space 
Such as “What is the growth of Mb3 stands in Karakôy Forest 
81