Modeling land use/land cover change and mapping morphological fragmentation of agricultural lands in Thrace Region/Turkey

Human factors such as development of new roads and urban and industrial areas have caused reduction and fragmentation of agricultural lands in Thrace Region as in many parts of the world over the past few decades. To minimize the negative impact of these anthropogenic activities, it is necessary to forecast spatiotemporal land use/land cover change and its effect on agricultural land fragmentation for future. In this study, first, land use/land cover change was simulated with CLUE-S model under three scenarios for 2050. Then, morphological fragmentation and disorder degree of agricultural lands were analyzed using land use/land cover change maps (1990 and 2014), simulation results (2050) and 1/25,000 Tekirdag Provincial Environmental Plan (2023). Morphological Spatial Pattern Analysis and entropy methods were used to determine the spatiotemporal fragmentation degree in agricultural lands. Results of scenarios 1 and 2 demonstrate that urban areas will increase due to population growth, and increasing urban and industrial land sprawl will accelerate the decline and fragmentation of agricultural lands until 2050. However, loss and fragmentation of core agricultural lands for scenario 3 where the protection rules are applied will be less than scenarios 1 and 2. To mitigate further fragmentation in agricultural lands in the future, particularly artificial spatial development areas should be constructed on the zones with currently high entropy and fragmented small core pieces. This study, as a tool for performance review in regional planning, recommends a set of measures to control agricultural land fragmentation, such as more effective protection of remaining unfragmented areas.