Using NDVI to Assess Vegetative Land Cover Change in Coastline of Belek, Antalya

Abstract

Factors such as rapid urbanization, crowded cities and intense work pressure have caused to increase leisure and recreation needs of people living in the cities and thus to vary tourism activities and recreation areas. Nowadays golf tourism is one of the activities that especially preferred in European countries but wide spreading in Turkey in recent years.

The material of this research is 18.68 hectare in the coastline of Belek, Antalya which are golf areas today. For assessing vegetative land cover change of the case area, 1990, 2001 and 2010 Landsat TM satellite images were analysed with NDVI = (NIR – R) / (NIR + R) formula.  Created NDVI maps were compared with ArcGIS Image Analysis to calculate vegetation changes.

Analysis shows that % 40.83 (7.63 hectare) of total vegetation have not been changed in 20 years. NDVI value slightly changed in % 9.33 (1.74 hectare) and also increased in %10.20 (1.90 hectare) of area. But %39.64 (7.41 hectare) of total vegetation have been decreased dramatically. As a result, increases and decreases of NDVI values and the reasons of the changes were discussed.