n Lake between 
  
~Sanliurfa Station 
-Adiyaman Station 
  
ake and Harran 
n is performed 
in in order to 
ed agricultural 
> examined, the 
1d bare ground 
    
  
  
  
It has shown that, irrigated agricultural fields have been 
increased by 56.3% on Harran Plain within the period of 1992 — 
2011. 
x Me 
gU E 
27.08.2006 
  
; 
Roby, y 
04.09.2009 25.08.2011 
Fig 6. Spatiotemporal patterns of irrigated agricultural fields on 
Harran Plain within the mid to late summer times of 1992, 
1998, 2002, 2006, 2009 and 2011. The figure shows an outline 
of the Harran Plains where green colors denote irrigated 
agricultural fields. 
Results also reveal information on the spatial pattern of 
expansion within the Harran Plain (Fig. 6). While irrigation 
occurred in the central parts of the Harran Plain between 1992 
and 1999, irrigation expanded at the margins of the plain for the 
year 2002, and it expanded at the north of the plain especially 
for the last 3 years, reclaiming marginal lands with the 
introduction of irrigation. 
Next, we investigated the relationships between seasonal water 
reserve changes and irrigated plains throughout the past 30 
years. With the currently changing climatic conditions, we 
relied on the Landsat time series to analyze the differences in 
irrigated area (Fig. 7). 
  
2500 Ga Water Reserve ; 7 1000 : 
«Irrigated Lands 
~— Annual precipitation (Sanliurfa Station) 900 
— Annual precipitation (Adiyaman Station) 
    
2000 800 
= 
2 
> 
1500 600 
500 
Area (km?) 
Precipitation (mm) 
1000 400 
300 
500 
  
1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 
Fig. 7 Changes in Harran Plain irrigated lands and water reserve 
with annual precipitations. Water reserve and irrigated land area 
are taken from the Landsat time series. 
In the Harran Plain, 1,552 km? were identified as irrigated as of 
2011 in all irrigation unions, accounting for approximately 56% 
of the total land area. This is approximately a 250% increase 
from 1992, when the total irrigated area was only 599 km?. A 
total of 1,382 km? was irrigated as of 2006, 1,418 km? as of 
2007, an additional 1,449 km? as of 2009, and an additional 
1,513 km? as of 2010, before reaching a maximum in 2011. 
Fig. 7 also reveals that the rate of expansion of irrigated lands 
increases between 1992 and 1999. However, by the year 1999, 
there is a 5% decrease in irrigated agricultural lands with a 
decreasing water reserve of approximately 10% because of a 
significant decrease in precipitation. A related observation is 
that from 2003-2008 the annual precipitation significantly 
decreased. Despite some of these climatic changes, there was no 
significant change in the increasing trend of the both irrigated 
agricultural fields and the water reserve. 
5. CONCLUSION 
In remote sensing based studies of irrigated lands, imagery with 
high spatial resolution is necessary to accurately locate irrigated 
fields and map their areal extent with sufficient detail (Pax- 
Lenney and Woodcock, 1997). 
Remote sensing has been an effective tool for monitoring 
irrigated lands under a variety of climatic conditions and 
locations. It provides synoptic and timely coverage of 
agricultural lands in several spectral bands (Ozcan, 2007). 
Image archives allow comparison across dates, yielding change 
over time. 
We have used a simple but robust method for remote detection 
of summer irrigated lands. It provides an applicable example of 
the practical utility of remote sensing for summer irrigation 
monitoring in the southeastern Anatolia (GAP) region. 
In this study, the impacts of the Atatürk Dam on agro- 
meteorological aspects of the Southeastern Anatolia region have