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DETECTION OF WATER RESERVOIR ON ELMALI DAM OF ISTANBUL USING SPACE TECHNOLOGY 
Cigdem GOKSEL, Cankut Ormeci 
ITU Civil Engineering Faculty, Remote Sensing Division 
Maslak, 80626 ISTANBUL 
KEY WORDS: Remote Sensing, Urban, Change Detection, Multitemporal, Classification 
PURPOSE: 
One of the main problems of Istanbul is the development without any planning. Many plans have been designed for the 
city, but not many of them have been used in the application. For this reason, ecological balance in the city has been 
harmed. The city has been extended towards the water basins in the north. This extension has caused a shrinkage of 
agricultural land and forests, and has increased surface water pollution around the dams. In this study, the land use 
and temporal variation have been examined using the 1984 and the 1992 Landsat TM images. The area selected is 
located near Istanbul, Elmali Water Basin Area, in which the land use has been changed due to the large scale 
migration. 
1. INTRODUCTION 
Istanbul is the largest city of Turkey, including the size of 
its population, population density, economic and social 
activities. Around the urban areas in Istanbul, land is 
being rapidly converted from rural to urban uses. The 
population of Istanbul increases by 500 000 people every 
year (note that this increase is equal to the population of 
Helsinki, Finland). This population increase has been 
located around water basin areas. Water basin areas are 
under serious threat of uncontrolled urbanisation. 
Regional and municipal planners require up-to-date 
information to because of current status of the land and 
to manage land development and plans for change. It is 
difficult to maintain up-to-date information on new 
housing and industrial/commercial developments. The 
land use plans has been important compenent of urban 
and regional planning. Even with the availability of 
satellite imargery an computer storage of imformation, 
the stage has not yet been reached where up-to-date 
information can be rapidly and easily provided. (Treitz, 
1992). Remote sensing is an efficient tecnique to be used 
to obtain information on the land cover and urban 
ecosystem. Remote sensing methods have become the 
fastest way to collect information about detecting the face 
and development of such problems.They help us to 
collect data rapidly about land use, to transmit data to 
the user via satellite, to identify problems and to work on 
solutions . 
The main purpose of this study is establish a basis for 
examining the potentials of the use of satellite images as 
an information source for landuse mapping in the context 
of urban planning. 
2. STUDY AREA AND DATA SOURCES 
Istanbul's drinking water is provided by surface water 
lesourses from seven water dams. The Elmali Dam 
Water reserve area is located on the Anatolian side and is 
approximately 15 km. away from Istanbul's city center. 
257 
  
Figure 1: The study area Elmali Water Basin 
The second Bosphorous Bridge and Transit European 
Motor Way, which are located in the eastern part of the 
Elmali, (TEM) have played an important role to 
encourage urban expansion and population increase in 
the water basins. 
The population in the Elmali water basins has shown a 
drastic increase from 1985 to 1990. This increase in 
Istanbul was around 5.3. 96 wherease the same rate for 
the Elmali water basin area was 17.4 96 for the period of 
1985-1990. (Cetiner ,1994). 
International Archives of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing. Vol. XXXI, Part B7. Vienna 1996