Monitoring the spatiotemporal changes in regional ecosystem health: a case study in Izmir, Turkey

The maintenance of human well-being and development is dependent on ecosystem goods and services. However, natural ecosystems and biodiversity have been disturbed by human activities. Therefore, assessment of ecosystem health has become one of the main topics in landscape management. The aim of this study is to reveal the effects of land use/land cover (LULC) change on regional ecosystem health (REH) in Izmir, Turkey. The study used the vigour, organization and resilience model together with potential ecosystem services to understand the relationships between LULC structure, ecosystems and human activities using the most populous and urbanized parts of Izmir metropolitan city. For this purpose, the CORINE land cover maps and Landsat satellite images for 1990 and 2018 were used. Our results showed that there was an increase in the mean regional ecosystem health value (from 48.06 to 49.32) during 1990-2018, but it changed in an inconsistent way in the different parts of the study area. The urban sprawl type and the presence of vegetation were important factors affecting the overall REH value. The spatiotemporal LULC changes were effective on all the ecosystem health indicators. Among all the ecosystem health indicators, ecosystem vigour and resilience were the most important factors positively affected the REH level in highly urbanized districts. Overall, our study showed that whilst the gains in vegetation between urban and rural areas enhanced the ecosystem vigour and resilience during 1990-2018, they have also improved the regional health of districts located along the coastal parts of the study area.