Infrastructure development with(out) ecological conservation: the Northern Forests in İstanbul

Keywords: urban sustainability, urbanization, land change, habitat fragmentation, biodiversity, planning
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Friday
Session Start / End Time: 2/25/2022 11:20 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/25/2022 12:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 60

Abstract

Large-scale infrastructure development that accompanies global urban transformation threatens biodiversity and ecosystems around the world. In particular, transportation infrastructure uniquely affects landscape structure and connectivity. However, analyses of change in habitat configuration due to multiple, linked transportation infrastructure are rare. Here, we analyze how a new airport and new highway system, part of the Silkroad Economic Belt within the Belt and Road Initiative and partially funded by Chinese finances, altered the spatial pattern of forest habitats to the north of the İstanbul metropolitan region in the context of two-decade-long landscape change. We carry out a land-change analysis from 2000 to 2019. We then analyze the changes in the spatial patterns of various forest habitat types across the metropolitan region, within and in the vicinity of the airport site, and in a key biodiversity area (KBA) that the new highway passes through. New transportation infrastructure significantly altered the forest habitats. Ten percent of all forest cover was lost, a quarter of which due to the new transportation development. Overall and within the KBA, respectively, core forest habitat decreased by 20% and 16%; the share of isolated and edge habitats within the remaining forest increased by 7% and 8%. The degradation of the forest landscape has implications for the endemic biodiversity and ecosystem services relied on by the metropolitan area. Our findings inform landscape strategies to arrest these degradation trends. Such strategies can succeed if ecological conservation is integrated into planning and current highly centralized governance structure is reformed.