Uzaktan Algılama Verileri ile Uluslararası Suların İzlenmesi

Abstract

Many freshwater bodies are shared by two or more countries. Managing shared water can cause conflicts over freshwater rights and may become a brake on development for some struggling nations. Frequent water bodies monitoring is a crucial part of their sustainable management.As remote sensing data can be useful in monitoring water bodies, in this study, three-decade changes of a shared lake between North Macedonia and Greece, Dojran Lake, have been investigated using remote sensing techniques. For that purpose, several indices retrieved from the Landsat have been used for monitoring the Lake. The results from the analyses have been compared with the data from a water level gauging station, and the results showed a strong coefficient of determination higher than 0.79. Results show that the most critical year for the Lake has been 2002 when it started recovering and by the year of 2017 has gained its water area as in 1986. New approaches to long‐term water planning and management that incorporate principles of sustainability and equity are required for lowering the conflicts over water rights, and especially to avoid ecological and environmental catastrophes that may affect both of the sharing countries.The joint use of such international cross-border water bodies can create resilience to water scarcity or ecological problems for each country. Therefore, it is of great importance to determine these water bodies using remote sensing technologies and to take necessary measurements. This study is an example that such an event can be determined with high accuracy.