How did the area of Oriental sweetgum in Muğla change over seventy years of forestry records? The chart moves as you scroll; each figure's source sits beneath the stop.
1,416
hectares
Liquidambar orientalis
Oriental sweetgum grows wild only in Türkiye and on the island of Rhodes. Its largest stands are here, in the Köyceğiz-Dalyan basin.
Photograph: A sweetgum grove and the stream running through it · Köyceğiz · M.Barış Ak, courtesy of the photographer
1949
According to forestry records, the sweetgum area in Muğla is 6,312 hectares.
Peer-reviewed18
Photograph: Water inside the sweetgum forest · Köyceğiz · M.Barış Ak, courtesy of the photographer
1955
The area falls to 4,316 hectares: roughly a third in six years.
Peer-reviewed18
Photograph: Water inside the sweetgum forest · Köyceğiz · M.Barış Ak, courtesy of the photographer
1987
Sweetgum grows on waterlogged soil that is ideal for farming. Part of the forest was felled and part was drained to make way for citrus orchards. By 1987 the recorded area is 1,337 hectares.
Peer-reviewedNGO publication1819
Photograph: Lake Köyceğiz, sunset from a jetty · Köyceğiz · small touch, CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
2016
The Muğla Regional Forest Directorate's figure is 1,416.65 hectares: roughly unchanged since 1987. The project concept file gives a fall from 6,500 to 800 hectares around the lake; that figure is not independently verified and may use a different scale.
Peer-reviewedProject concept file18
Photograph: A sweetgum grove and the stream running through it · Köyceğiz · M.Barış Ak, courtesy of the photographer
Today
About 60% of the remaining sweetgum forest, some 770 hectares, lies inside the Köyceğiz-Dalyan Special Environmental Protection Area.
NGO publication19
Photograph: Water inside the sweetgum forest · Köyceğiz · M.Barış Ak, courtesy of the photographer
Inside the forest
In Muğla's sweetgum forests 108 saproxylic beetle species were counted, 15 of them new records for Türkiye. About 50 bird species have also been recorded in sweetgum forests.
Peer-reviewedNGO publication1319
Photograph: A sweetgum grove and the stream running through it · Köyceğiz · M.Barış Ak, courtesy of the photographer
The museum's work
The tree has not vanished but has narrowed to a small area; no one yet keeps a record of the tree and the knowledge of working it. Case 03 exists for that.
Proposal
There is no room to tell this story. A signature is the first brick of that room.
… people want this museum. Put your name on the wall too.
Sign — lay a brick