M. Lütfi Süzen

Municipal solid waste landfill site selection for the city of Şanliurfa-Turkey: an example using MCDA integrated with GIS

A municipal solid waste (MSW) management system needs solid waste management (SWM) techniques where the presence of a sanitary landfill is vital. One of the most important issues of sanitary landfilling is to locate the facility to an optimal location. Despite the versatility and case-dependent nature of conventional expert-based site selection procedures, the number of sites to be chosen increases with increased population forcing a number of constraints. Consequently, constraints and environmental regulations mechanically mask unsuitable areas, leaving very little areas to be assessed. This turns the situation into a challenging issue for a geographical information system (GIS) used with multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA), to select optimal site. The study aims to apply MCDA integrated with GIS to select possible sites of a MSW landfill with the same expert and same cognitive parameters while compared with the already present one. Results of this study revealed that conventional expert-based methods could not always evaluate all constraints at the same time and map reproduction is limited when parameter maps are changing rapidly in time. In order to produce cognitive and reproducible analyses, GIS with MCDA integration offers a good solution for site selection issue and forms a good alternative for conventional methods.

Mapping evaporate minerals by ASTER

Evaporate minerals are important industrial raw materials that have been used in diverse industries for many years. As one of the most extensively used evaporate minerals, gypsum is an important raw material in the construction, agriculture, textile, dentistry and chemical industries, resulting in a massive increase in demand of these minerals in recent years. The aim of this study was to demonstrate the responses of common remote sensing mapping techniques and further develop some of them while evaluating their success in well-known gypsum outcrops using Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) imagery. The region selected for the test area was Ankara Bala, which has gypsum outcrops with operational mines mapped in detailed studies by the General Directorate of Mineral Research and Exploration (MTA). The methods of band ratioing (BR), decorrelation stretch (DS), feature-oriented principal component analysis (FOPCA) and thermal indices were tested to map the mineral gypsum. For the BR method, the ratio 4:9, for DS the Red-Green-Blue (RGB) composite 1-4-8, for FOPCA Principal Component (PC) 3 and for thermal infrared (TIR) indices the previously known Quartz Index (QI) modified as the Sulfate Index (SI) were found to be successful in general terms for evaporate mapping. For an absolute accuracy assessment the results of these methods were checked in the field and, from the areas where the results showed common anomalies, samples were taken for field spectrometry analyses and X-ray analyses. For a relative accuracy assessment all of the results were compared with each other to evaluate the differences and their successes. We found that all of the methods were successful in mapping evaporates; however, despite its lower spatial resolution, the TIR data from ASTER when used as the SI yielded a more refined result than the other methods.Evaporate minerals are important industrial raw materials that have been used in diverse industries for many years. As one of the most extensively used evaporate minerals, gypsum is an important raw material in the construction, agriculture, textile, dentistry and chemical industries, resulting in a massive increase in demand of these minerals in recent years. The aim of this study was to demonstrate the responses of common remote sensing mapping techniques and further develop some of them while evaluating their success in well-known gypsum outcrops using Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) imagery. The region selected for the test area was Ankara Bala, which has gypsum outcrops with operational mines mapped in detailed studies by the General Directorate of Mineral Research and Exploration (MTA). The methods of band ratioing (BR), decorrelation stretch (DS), feature-oriented principal component analysis (FOPCA) and thermal indices were tested to map the mineral gypsum. For the BR method, the ratio 4:9, for DS the Red–Green–Blue (RGB) composite 1-4-8, for FOPCA Principal Component (PC) 3 and for thermal infrared (TIR) indices the previously known Quartz Index (QI) modified as the Sulfate Index (SI) were found to be successful in general terms for evaporate mapping. For an absolute accuracy assessment the results of these methods were checked in the field and, from the areas where the results showed common anomalies, samples were taken for field spectrometry analyses and X-ray analyses. For a relative accuracy assessment all of the results were compared with each other to evaluate the differences and their successes. We found that all of the methods were successful in mapping evaporates; however, despite its lower spatial resolution, the TIR data from ASTER when used as the SI yielded a more refined result than the other methods.

Evaluation of cross-track illumination in EO-1 Hyperion imagery for lithological mapping

Hyperspectral remote sensing data is a powerful tool for discriminating lithological units and for the preparation of mineral maps for alteration studies. The spaceborne hyperspectral Hyperion sensor, despite its narrow swath width (∼7.5 km), possesses great potential with its 196 channels within the wavelength range 426.82–2395.50 nm. Although it has many advantages such as low cost and on-demand coverage, much uncertainty exists in the utility of its applications. For example, poor signal-to-noise ratio, the presence of sensor-specific defects and thicker atmospheric column due to its spaceborne platform makes certain environmental and geological applications difficult or impossible. In this article we demonstrate these calibration-related uncertainties, which are manifest from the preprocessing stage to the classification stage. In addition, the intimate mixing of minerals within specific targets, for example within individual outcropping lithological units or endmembers, adds uncertainty to our spectral discrimination results. The aim of this study was to develop and evaluate an approach for geological mapping of outcrops with Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) Hyperion data. Atmospheric corrections and correction for cross-track illumination (CTI) variations (smile) were determined at different wavelength regions: the visible–near-infrared (VNIR; 420–1000 nm) and shortwave infrared (SWIR; 1000–2400 nm) regions. Our methodology was tested in a selected site at Central Anatolia, Turkey containing minimal vegetation cover. The results obtained from the image analyses were then compared and assessed with field observations and spectral measurements.

Evaporate mapping in Bala region (Ankara) by remote sensing techniques

Evaporate minerals are important industrial raw materials used in diverse industries for years. One of the extensively used evaporate mineral gypsum has become very common raw material in construction, agriculture, textile, dentistry and chemical industry in recent years. In coherence with its common use especially in construction industry as plaster, demand to these minerals rises each following year. The aim of this study is to further develop thermal image processing methods to identify gypsum minerals. For the remote sensing analyses ASTER images which have high spatial and spectral resolution are used. Ankara Bala region has well known outcrops with operational mines and mapped in detail by the studies of MTA so that this region is selected as the test area.

Identification of possible source areas of stone raw materials combining remote sensing and petrography

ABSTRACT Understanding the location and distribution of raw materials used in the production of prehistoric artefacts is a significant part of archaeological research that aims to understand the interregional interaction patterns in the past. The aim of this study is to explore the regional locations of the source rock utilized in the production of stone bowls, which were unearthed at the Neolithic (approximately 6500–5500 BC) site of Domuztepe (Kahramanmaraş-Turkey), via a combination of remote-sensing methods, petrographic and chemical analyses. To accomplish this task, the stone bowls were identified mineralogically, geochemically and spectrally, and then mapped with Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) sensors. According to the defined mineralogical composition, which is iron-rich chlorite, the target areas were selected among geologically potential areas that would bear similar source rocks in near vicinity and the target spectral signature was searched within these target areas. In order to overcome the problem of spectral similarity of chlorite group to some other minerals such as carbonate or epidote group minerals, band ratioing (BR) and feature-oriented principal component analysis (FOPCA) were used with an integrated approach and then their results were filtered according to the outcomes of the relative absorption band-depth (RBD) images. The areas with highest potentials were vectorized and then field checked. Mineralogical investigations on the collected field samples reveal that there is a mineralogical match between the source and target material. One group of stone bowls samples have similar geochemical signatures as the field samples having ultramafic origins. However, there is another group of stone bowls samples which are geochemically dissimilar to the first group of field and bowls samples. The data regarding the geochemical signatures of these two groups indicate a genetic relation between the sample sets. Therefore, it is concluded that the source rock of a major portion of the stone bowls unearthed at Domuztepe most probably originated from the near vicinity of the site.

Hydrogeological and Hydrochemical Investigation for Below-Sea-Level Quarrying at Cement Raw Material Site (Kocaeli-Darica, Turkey)

Abstract A research has been carried out to investigate the effects of below sea level mining on the cement raw material quality of a limestone quarry located adjacent to the shoreline near Darica-Kocaeli-Turkey. Field studies involved rock mass characterization through discontinuity surveys performed at the working benches of the quarry as well as on the core samples, monitoring of groundwater levels, performance of water pressure tests, and in-situ hydrochemical measurements. Hydrogeological data suggest that the carbonate sequence forms a poor unconfined aquifer having hydraulic conductivity values ranging between 10−6 m/s and 10−8 m/s. In the quarry, water seepages can only be observed at the shear zones. Electrical conductivity profiles taken from the boreholes located at various distances from the shore line indicated the present position of the salt water wedge.