Abstract:

The dynamically highest one among all habitats is human environment and habitat of the said environment is cities. Human communities with ever-increasing population transform different living environments into their habitat. Human, during the said progress, also destroys a lot of ecological environments while designing its circle in its own way by extending its habitat. Human who is a part of ecology gives self-the actual harm during such a progress. In this research, we investigated spatial development of Tarsus city and tried to examine this development ecologically. Within this scope, method of water index was used in the first stage to determine urban development in remote sensing. Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) was established to determine the direction of urban development and the effect of this development on agricultural lands. In consequence of the investigation it was determined that Tarsus city had highly grown spatially during the term between the years of 1985-2011. As a matter of fact, covering an area of 1644 ha in 1985, Tarsus city reached to 3123 ha in 2011 showing an increase of almost 100%. It is seen that some part of agricultural areas in immediate surroundings of the city was transformed into settlement and industrial areas, nevertheless, agricultural areas increased from 5992 ha to 6848 ha with opening new areas to cultivation. Spatial development of the city occurs toward highway in northwest of the city and toward relatively high pasture areas rather than east and southeast directions where agricultural areas are located at. Due to the fact that spatial development of Tarsus city is not toward forest areas in which there is an ecologically rich living life or toward productive agricultural areas which are of importance economically, it forms a positive example of urban development both economically and ecologically. But yet, problems such as storing of domestic, medical and industrial wastes disorganizedly, and releasing of waste waters in most industrial facilities to the receiving environment without refining etc. needs to be solved urgently.

Keywords: