A SPATIO-TEMPORAL APPROACH TO NATIONAL NATURAL RESOURCES: THE CHANGE OF PROVINCIAL WATER USE OVER TURKEY

Abstract

As time progresses, water issues get more importance over global and local agenda of the world. As is known Water issues associate with Geographical Science especially in terms of Water Resource Management, Demography and National Water Policy. From the outset, Statistics has been one of main disciplines supporting Geographical Sciences. The fact that recently Sub-branches of Statistics involves spatial properties, such as distance and contiguity, makes explanatory and descriptive power of statistics increased in geographical sciences. In this regard, Spatial autocorrelation is an useful tool to measure interaction among the adjacent units. In the study provincial water use in Turkey between 2004 and 2014 is examined by applying spatial autocorrelation. Moreover the change of water use between these years is analyzed. Thus the spatial characteristics of Water Use and its decennary change is determined. It is observed that Central Anatolia and its neighboring provinces encounters evidential water scarcity and East Anatolia gets its water resource into use between 2004 and 2014. This fact makes Integrated Water Management considerable method in order to sustain water use in reasonable level. National Water Policy ought to be constructed in accordance with this result.