KURAS: A Decision Support System for the Water Need and Winter Suitability of Landscape Plants in Türkiye
Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: The water-use classes given in landscape literature and guides are meaningful only relative to the climate in which the source was produced. The same "moderate" class requires no supplementary irrigation in a coastal city with wet summers, yet corresponds to a clear water deficit in inland and southeastern Anatolia. This study develops a reproducible, versioned method that combines the water use and cold hardiness reported in the sources with the 1991–2020 climate of the 81 province centres of Türkiye, and implements it as a free, web-based decision support system (KURAS). Plant information for 1,714 plant identities was compiled from Turkish academic studies, institutional guides and international databases. Climate data were computed from hourly ERA5-Land and ERA5 fields with FAO-56 reference evapotranspiration and corrected with station observations. The local water class is determined from the sum of the monthly positive differences between coefficient-scaled evapotranspiration and effective rainfall over May–September, using thresholds derived from national medians. Winter suitability is assessed by comparing the USDA zone or minimum hardiness temperature given in the source with the mean annual extreme minimum temperature of the location. Uncorrected ERA5 summer precipitation exceeded 55 station normals within 15 km of the province centres by 15% at the median and by more than 1.5 times in 11 provinces. With these provinces anchored to stations, a plant reported as "moderate" received a moderate local class in 47 provinces, high in 16, and low or very low in 18. Every revision of the method was tested with a before/after comparison over the 81 provinces and all plants, and no unexpected change was found. The results show that using source classes without linking them to the local climate can lead to systematic errors in plant selection. English edition. This is the English translation of version 2 of the Turkish preprint "Türkiye'de Peyzaj Bitkilerinin Su İhtiyacı ve Kış Uyumu İçin Karar Destek Sistemi: KURAS" (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23284828). Content, data and results are identical. KURAS is free to use at https://kurakcilanaliz.com. A companion study applies the method to the climates of 2050 and 2090: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23436247.
Authors: Gilik, Enes, Yılmaz, Miray
Institution: Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart Üniversitesi
Language: English
Subfield: Soil Science
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7222851563