The Central Anatolia region has an area of about 15 million ha constituting 21% of the country’s surface area. While the destruction of forests continues, it is still debated whether the Central Anatolian steppes are natural or not. This research may be considered as a preliminary study to conclude these discussions to some extent. This study aims to determine the forest relicts in the Central Anatolian region and to reveal their characteristic features. For this purpose, (1) forest relicts were detected for creating a forest relict map of Central Anatolia using remote sensing and (2) general characteristics of forest relicts were investigated using terrestrial methods. The results indicated that forest relicts were generally located in the mountains. Due to the variation of the ecological condition depending on the geographic and geomorphological factors,
while the forest relicts and variety of species were dense in the north of the region, the forest relicts were found only on volcanic mountains and oak was the only dominant tree species with increasing drought in the south of the region. A lower occurrence of forest determined by nature was detected, which was varied by location. Under the lower occurrence of forest may be accepted as natural steppe. However, forest relict above this limit should not be considered as a relict of the grove forest, which needs to be categorized and redefined.
Cite this article as: Kahveci, G. (2022). General characteristics and distribution of forest relicts in central anatolia. Forestist, 72(2), 192-198.