A CASE STUDY ON TAHTALI DAM, INVESTIGATING DAM RESERVOIRS WITHIN THE SCOPE OF ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS AND THE TURKISH LEGISLATIONS, IN TERMS OF RECREATIONAL USAGE APPROACHES

Gokhan Balik*, Bahar Turkyilmaz Tahta**

*Trakya University, Edirne, Turkey
**Ege University, Izmir, Turkey

Abstract

The climate change, increasing irrigation and clean sustainable water resources need are today’s few most important global environmental problems. Dams are built for centuries to prevent floods, to benefit from hydroelectricity, to obtain drinking and irrigation water and to provide space for recreational activities. Especially from 1950’s, as the world population and need for water has increased, the number of dams built was increased greatly. Recently, dams’ environmental impacts have been emerged. On one hand, recreational activities and the usage of clean water are affecting the environment and the reservoirs’ ecosystem and on the other hand; there is the socio-economic development. By the legislations and the master plans, the problems between these two competing factors can be solved. In this study, dam reservoirs and their environmental impacts have been investigated according to the landscape architectural view then Tahtali Dam has been examined accordingly and recommended recreational activities. For this reason; land uses, before (1995) and after (2005) the filling of the reservoir of Tahtali Dam have been compared from the satellite photographs, air photographs and topographic map then; recommended recreational activities to Tahtali Dam have been examined by comparing with the Turkish legislations. As a result; it has been detected that the outside environmental impacts to Tahtali Dam is greater than the environmental impacts of the dam itself. But still, these two impacts are fastening each other. In addition, it has been seen that the land uses changed and illegal house buildings occur. For this reason, master plan must be prepared for the whole reservoir then, environmental impacts and land uses must be controlled immediately. Additionally, recreational master plans should be prepared for the dams in Turkey and recreational activities should be applied accordingly. As a result of that; as some important sport branches will improve in the country, highly coasted dams will be used to gain income and to protect the reservoirs.

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