How Is Land Degradation Perceived By the Farmers of Beypazarı?

One of the most significant land-related challenges is land degradation. Especially, fertile agricultural lands are under serious threat because of inappropriate land management strategies. The result-oriented ways to overcome this difficulty are to know attitudes and knowledge levels of farmers on this issue and to develop appropriate agricultural policies based upon assessing biophysical indicators of land degradation. Land transformations, typically linked to land degradation processes, have been dynamically occurring for many years as land competence increases by different competing uses at national level. Within the scope of this study, biophysical land-use transformations have been evaluated for a 33-year projection from 1986 to 2018 by using remote sensing technologies for mainly rangeland, forest and agricultural lands in Beypazarı. The results depicted that the proportion of agricultural land increased up to 41% with an increasing rate of 16% during this period. Subsequently, a survey was conducted to test the awareness of farmers about the socio-economic effects. A face-to-face survey with farmers revealed that 137 of the interviewed farmers have an idea about land degradation threat with marked low productivity and soil erosion as principal indicators, but 33.5% has no idea about the issue.