Impacts of Climate Change on Ecosystem in Turkey in terms of Water

Climate change, a multi-dimensional and complex problem, is today’s and future’s undeniable reality. For decades, we have been striving for understanding the causes and effects of this catastrophic event. Through this pursuit of knowledge, we now know that climate change has been altering the ecosystem in which we live in tremendous different ways. To understand how and in which way climate change affects our ecosystem, I will focus on specific region which is Turkey, my hometown, and evaluate the extent and severity  of climate change’s effects on the target region to indicate the importance for taking  precautions against climate change.

Climate change affects humans’ life in a variety of ways from the timing of the extreme events, mostly seasonal life cycle events, to the small but consistent disturbances in our daily life, such as price increases. Mentioned above, I want to point out the examples of these consequences in Turkey. To begin with it should be clearly denoted that Turkey is highly vulnerable to climate change because of its geographic location as being part of the southern belt of the Mediterranean Europe. This vulnerability makes Turkey important to observe the devastating effects of climate change on ecosystem. To narrow it down, I will start with arguing water, I want to share the effects of global warming on water resources in Turkey, which is an abiotic component of the physical environment in our ecosystem. When e consider the overall performance of water resources in Turkey, it is obvious to observe that climate change is “adding additional pressure on  already stressed water resources in Turkey” (Yilmaz& Yazicigil, 2011) To understand the reason, it should be denoted that global climate change is directly related with the temperature and precipitation. By causing increase in temperature, climate change is leading sea levels to rise. This happens in a global scope which means Turkey is also affecting by this situation, however, since Turkey is already having water resources management problems both because of its economic state and geopolitical location this creates much more severe consequences than other countries. To state specifically, “mean   temperatures in Turkey increased steadily between 1941-2007, with a trend of 0.64°C/100 years.” (Aktaş, 2012) “Particularly highly urbanized area including Istanbul and Izmit as well as south and southeast regions of Turkey has a significant trend of increasing mean temperatures “(TRMEF, 2008). Depending on this increase, “higher sea level rises were observed in deltas of big rivers. Flood and sedimentation risks exist in Kızılırmak, Yeşilırmak,Gediz, Seyhan and Ceyhan Deltas” (UNDP,  2007).  Beyond these effects, climate change also causes incremental increase in the number of floods because it changes the timing and intense of the rainings.

By considering these, we can conclude that, overall, Turkey is negatively affected from climate change since it leads to unwanted consequences in terms of available water resources in our ecosystem.

Aktaş, Özgür. (2014). Impacts of climate change on water resources in Turkey. Environmental engineering and management journal. 13. 881-889. 10.30638/eemj.2014.092.