15.3.5. Collaboration for shared land ecosystems
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15.3.5. Collaboration for shared land ecosystems
In 2025, METU worked with the local community and local authorities to look after the land ecosystems it shares with the people of Ankara: the METU Forest and the area around Lake Eymir.
Citizen science with the Nature Conservation Centre Foundation
Tür Say! brings volunteers from the local community together with METU EKOSAM, the EKOSAM Student Club and the Nature Conservation Centre Foundation to record and protect the biodiversity of the METU Forest and steppe; Türkiye's 7th Tür Say! was held on the METU campus on Sunday 25 May 2025, organised by DKM with METU EKOSAM and the EKOSAM Student Club, and was open to anyone who wished to take part.
https://dkm.org.tr/sites/other/dkm/uploads/TurSayODTU_Rapor_2025.pdf
Local authorities
The METU Conservation Zoning Plan, issued by the Ministry of Environment, Urbanisation and Climate Change, sets the framework for METU, the ministry and the Çankaya and Gölbaşı municipalities to protect the campus's natural areas together.
Ankara's tumuli and ecological corridors (TÜBİTAK, 2023–2025)
From May 2023 to November 2025, a TÜBİTAK-funded METU project mapped the Phrygian burial mounds (tumuli) of Ankara together with the city's natural systems – topography, streams, valleys and land use – to identify ecological corridors that can carry the Central Anatolian landscape, and the tumuli within it, into the city. The multidisciplinary team of archaeologists, architects, landscape architects, planners and conservation experts used surveys, in-depth interviews and participatory workshops with residents, and shares its results with citizens and the local government so that this nature-culture heritage can be protected and become part of everyday city life.