Abstract

Coastal provinces where tourism and transport activities concentrate generate spatially heterogeneous air pollution burdens and health-relevant exposure conditions. However, integrated spatial evidence linking tourism-transport pressure with seasonal multi-pollutant burden remains limited. This study develops a GIS-based analytical framework for four major Turkish coastal provinces—Antalya, Muğla, Aydın, and İzmir—to examine the spatial relationship between tourism-transport pressure and seasonal air pollution dynamics. The framework combines a multi-criteria Tourism-Transport Suitability Index (SUI) derived from 11 spatial criteria using AHP and Fuzzy SIWEC; reference-normalized RMS-based multi-pollutant composite surfaces for PM10, SO2, NO2, NOx, NO, O3, and CO; a seasonal difference layer; and province-level Spearman correlation analysis based on random point sampling. The results show that tourism–transport pressure concentrates along coastal belts and major accessibility corridors, while pollutant-specific seasonal behaviors vary across provinces. Zonal statistics and correlation analyses indicate that the SUI–pollution relationship is generally weak and context-dependent. Rather than supporting a single deterministic tourism–pollution mechanism, the findings show that this relationship is spatially selective and seasonally mediated, with the seasonal-difference metric providing a clearer signal than absolute seasonal levels in some provinces, particularly in Aydın and İzmir. Overall, the framework offers a transferable GIS-based approach for evaluating tourism-transport pressure and seasonal multi-pollutant burden at the provincial scale.

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