Examination of the Change in the Vegetation Around the Kirka Boron Mine Site by Using Remote Sensing Techniques

Within the scope of the study, the change occurring in the vegetation cover was examined in different temporal and spatial scales for in the example of Kirka boron mining site. Two different satellite images, namely Landsat and Sentinel, were utilized while the competence of these two satellite images were analyzed. Unsupervised classification and vegetation indexes have been used from remote sensing techniques. It was observed that the mining area boundary could not be determined using vegetation indexes, whereas unsupervised classification techniques showed that the miningral site occupies 1144.5 ha area. NDVI and NDRe analyses were conducted to determine the vegetation change outside the mining area. It has been determined that the analyses performed with the NDVI (normalized difference vegetation index) and NDRe (normalized difference red edge index) indexes show different results on water surfaces, while they show similar results in rest of the areas. In NDVI analysis, it has been determined that the two satellite images gave similar results in NDVI analyses, while having higher spatial resolution, sentinel satellite images were able to capture more details.

Automated summary

The change in vegetation cover in Kirka boron mining site was examined using unsupervised classification and vegetation indexes from satellite images. The boundary of the mining area could not be determined using vegetation indexes, but unsupervised classification techniques revealed that the mining area occupies 1144.5 hectares. NDVI and NDRe analyses showed different results on water surfaces, while similar results were found in the rest of the areas. Sentinel satellite images, with higher spatial resolution, were able to capture more details compared to Landsat images in NDVI analyses.