LAUSR

The Present study focused on investigation of Land Use Land Cover (LULC) changes within three basins located in North-West part of Anatolia region, Turkey. The study area consisted of six provinces with 41 districts. Visible, near-infrared and shortwave-infrared bands of Landsat imageries, acquired in production seasons of 1984, 1999, and 2014, served as main data source. The area is covered by six Landsat scenes. Supervised classification maximum likelihood algorithm was adopted whereas LULC classes were considered as forest (F), grazing-other vegetation (G-O), agriculture (A), water surface (W), and residential area-bare soil (R-B). Prior to the classification process, scenes were subset according to district boundaries, and district-level images were classified to improve the classification precision, and then mosaicked to obtain LULC1984, LULC1999 and LULC2014 maps. The reliabilities of maps were evaluated by accuracy assessments using 900 stratified randomized control points with minimum of 90 points per class. LULC changes were evaluated in two terms; changes within study area (WSA) (ha, %) and changes within class area (WCA) (%). Moreover, distributions of class areas along three basins were presented. Finally, past statuses of each class were compared, particularly, impacts of urbanization on agriculture were highlighted, and population change patterns were evaluated as main