Page 35 - Çevre Şehir ve İklim Dergisi İngilizce - Özel Sayı

Zeynep Cansu Ayturan - Tuğba Dinçbaş
Halil Hasar

The land loss in Türkiye is at a quite critical level. While 1 cm of the upper
soil layer was formed between 100 and 400 years, erosion due to wrong use
in agricultural lands leads to 100 to 1000 times more soil loss than natural
erosion. An average of 75 billion tons of soil are transported by water and wind
erosion worldwide every year, and in Türkiye, this amount has been reduced
from 500 million tons/year in the 1970s to 140 million tons/year by 2020 (ÇEM,
2024; Erpul et al., 2018). Türkiye has taken important steps in the combat
against erosion. Afforestation, erosion control, rehabilitation of degraded
forest areas and pasture land rehabilitation works, which have been ongoing
since 1946, have allowed it to be resilient to erosion. The erosion control,
afforestation, pasture land rehabilitation and improvement activities carried
out in degraded forest areas in Türkiye between 2003 and 2023 are shown in
Figure 1. As of 2023, such works have been conducted on an area of about
9.5 million hectares. As one of the rare countries that enhance the amount of
forest areas worldwide, Türkiye has managed to increase this amount from
20.2 million hectares in 1972 to 23.3 million hectares in 2023 (OGM, 2023)

Figure 1. Erosion control, afforestation, pasture land rehabilitation and
improvement activities conducted in degraded forest areas in Türkiye
between 2003 and 2023 (OGM, 2023)
The rapid increase in the amount of forests in Türkiye over the past 40
years shows that it has an important sink capacity in the combat against
desertification and erosion. Forests, as carbon sinks, play a vital role in the
fight against climate change and form a natural barrier against erosion and
desertification. However, factors such as forest fires, drought and improper
land use threaten the health of forest ecosystems, which leads to a decrease
in sink capacity. In 2021, large forest fires in Türkiye caused a decrease of 10
million tons of CO2 equivalent in our sink area stocks (TURKSTAT, 2023). In

22 Journal of Environment, Urban and Climate