Article révisé par les pairs
| Résumé : | The Izmir region in Turkey is extremely valuable for the environment while being used immensely for tourism, agriculture and recreation. The geographic area of western Turkey is known for its unique physical and environmental settings. Due to its location in the Mediterranean climate, the region has certain typical features and is influenced by the local and regional climatic setting. The geography of the region combines diverse landforms, various geomorphological features, natural landscapes, species and vegetation richness: mountainous and hilly landscapes, caves, islands in the coastal area and lakes. The geology of the area of Western Anatolia is characterized by the neotectonic active faulting and high seismicity, which leads to the geomorphic instabilities and landslide formation in the research area. The vegetation in the study area is dominated by typical Mediterranean flora. The current environmental situation within the terrestrial parts of the ecosystems has been well discussed in several works. The main issues concerning deforestation of precious forest communities are desertification, soils erosion and land degradation in the surroundings. For example, plant cover and land degradation on Karuburun Peninsula has been studied and detected by Nurlu et al. (2003) in their remote sensing based research. Karaburun Peninsula is an important part of Aegean Sea ecosystems and is well known in Turkey as one of the major undisturbed sites in western Turkey with precious biodiversity structure, aesthetic landscapes and unique environment. To maintain sustainable development of the Turkish nature, the unique landscapes should be protected for the sustainable co-existence of man and nature.Other sources of environmental threats are radioactive wastes and radionuclides that originate both from natural sources, for instance leaching from minerals, and from pollutant sources, mostly from nuclear power plants, explosions and accidents. These factors of ecological contamination have direct impact on the terrestrial ecosystems. |
