Determination of Optimal Land Use in Gökçeada

Land suitability analysis is a component of sustainability evaluation of a land use. Suitability of land use can only be achieved by determining natural and cultural potential and choice of an appropriate land use with the ecological structure. In this research, land suitablity analysis of Gökçeada was carried out, on the basis of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and McHarg methods. After the determination of suitability in terms of the main three land use types, i.e. agriculture, meadow-pasture and forest, an optimal land use map was produced and results were compared with the present-day land use situation. Based on the results of analysis, the area proposed for forest, meadow-pasture and agricultural activities were 35.06% , 21.21% and 17.07% , respectively. When data from optimal land use is compared with that in the present-day conditions, it is noticed that the proportion of meadow-pastures areas excess the suggested value of optimal land use, as opposed to the proportions of forest and agricultural areas having smaller distributions. This implies that some meadow-pastures areas, which are recommended to be evaluated as forest and agricultural areas herein, are presently used as meadow-pasture lands