Morphological Analysis of Buyuk Menderes River Over the Years Using Satellite Imagery

Abstract

Both bank erosion and sediment deposition on the inner margins are important watershed management problems for streams. Bank erosion not only causes the loss of agricultural lands, but also leads to the narrowing of the cross sections of the streams with the accumulation of sediment in the interior, resulting in floods, damage to the cultivated areas, reduction in dam reservoir lifespan and thus, serious damage to a country's economy. In this study, the morphological analysis of the B. Menderes River, which is one of the most important rivers of Turkey and a residential and intensive agriculture region, for the thirty-year period between 1990-2020 is made via utilization of QGIS for the analysis of Landsat satellite images. This study is thought to be a preliminary study to quantify the morphological changes in B.Menderes River and is expected to be a basis for linking these changes to the changes in the hydrological regime in the basin. During this analysis, the shoreline of the main river, approximately 570 km long, was divided into 10 segments and the sinuosity index values, which are fold parameters, were calculated for each segment. According to the study, it is found that the curvature of the meanders of the B. Menderes River varies between 1.5 and 2.5 in most places.