The Importance of Time Dimension in the Vector-based Turkish Forest Information System

A new era has been started in urban and natural resource management when GIS (Geographic Information Systems) was put in use in Canada in 1971. Although, it was not possible to store and update the data desirably in the early times due to the deficiencies in computer hardware and software, those tasks that were difficult and time-consuming to fulfill by traditional techniques began to be performed in a faster, easier, and more reliable way because of recent developments in those areas. The recent development in computer hardware and software offer new possibilities to update temporal changes in geographic data and roll-back inquiries. Temporal changes have important roles in managing and planning dynamic systems such as forests. By means of GIS, these changes can be offered to forestry technicians and managers as a tool for planning and managing the Turkish forest resources in a more scientific way. Moreover, to use GIS would make it possible to control all the work backward in a reliable, fast and confidential way. This project aims to examine the capability boundaries of “Vector-based Temporal Forest Information System Prototype”. For this purpose, a prototype of forest information system was developed for a selected area, and possible changes in geographic objects in time were explored through various scenarios. Queries were performed into those temporal changes, which sets an example for the hereafter applications. In the recent years, there has been an intensified effort to establish a system of forest resources management in Turkey. However, these efforts underestimate importance of the time dimension, which this paper argues as central in the forest information system developments. According to this paper, unless time dimension is taken into consideration seriously, it would be very costly to correct mistakes made afterwards.