Changes in landscape spatial pattern in the highly developing state of Selangor, peninsular Malaysia
Introduction
Land is utilized either for a countries’ economic development and/or purposely for generating daily subsistence, such as practices of shifting agriculture, which usually involve slash-and-burn activities. The continuous rapid change of land use nowadays is common in developing tropical countries with fast growing economies. However, this scenario has been recognised to bring severe environmental degradation to both natural ecosystems, such as forest ecosystems (Endress and Chinea, 2001), wetland ecosystems (Zarin et al., 2001, Alonso-Perez et al., 2003) and riverine ecosystems (Yunus et al., 2003), as well as man-made ecosystems, such as urban ecosystems (Lopez et al., 2001).
In the past few decades, land development in several tropical countries has been influenced by high economic growth resulting in a significant shift, for example, from forest to agriculture and urbanization (e.g. Velázquez et al., 2003, Yunus et al., 2004). This alteration, which has produced so-called human landscapes, is becoming the prominent terrestrial landscape in many parts of the world (Farina, 2002, Ruiz-Luna and Berlanga-Robles, 2003, Fujihara and Kikuchi, 2005). According to Bunce et al. (1996) land use is one of the main attributes that determines the landscape type of particular areas or regions. Landscape modification may alter the number and types of patches, which eventually changes the landscape pattern of a particular area (Ruiz-Luna and Berlanga-Robles, 1999, Bunnell et al., 2003, Turner et al., 2003, Cifaldi et al., 2004). All of these changes are known to be affected by socio-economic factors and is being increasingly identified as critical factors influencing environmental change (Nagendra et al., 2004). Many landscape ecological studies have shown that socio-economic factors, such as urban sprawl (LaGro and Degloria, 1992, Zhao et al., 2003), forestry expansion (Nagashima et al., 2002) and patterns of agriculture (Hietala-Koivu, 1999, Mander et al., 1999) impact on the landscape. Socio-economic forces, however, are usually driven by government development policy. Thus, any consequences of land use and landscape pattern change due to socio-economic factors are influenced by development policies. Therefore, understanding the links between land use and landscape pattern, and development policy of development of land is pivotal to increasing effectiveness in managing the environmental sustainability.
Malaysia is a tropical country that has been experiencing extensive land use change associated with government developmental policies. In the 1960s and 1970s, Malaysian economic development was mainly based on the agricultural sector. During this time, most of the forested areas were converted into agricultural land, especially for oil palm and rubber plantations. In the 1980s, there was a major economic transformation to focus on the manufacturing sector. By 1987, this sector became the fastest growing sector and its growth rate exceeded the agricultural sector to account for 22.6% of country's gross domestic product (Economic Planning Unit Malaysia, 2004). The progress of this sector has been catalysing other development activities, such as urbanization, building highways, commercial development and development of other infrastructure. As a result there has been an increased demand for land, which includes the removal of permanent forest reserves and state forests. All of these changes have been identified as major causes of environmental degradation. However, the relationship between land use change and environmental degradation has always been portrayed without any quantitative measurement for understanding the relationship that can describe how it can impact on land use planning and management.
The concept of landscape ecology provides an integrated approach and opportunity to understand the relationship between landscape pattern and changes in environmental conditions due to human land uses (Urban et al., 1987, Gustafson, 1998). Quantification of landscape patterns through various landscape metrics (e.g. O’Neill et al., 1988, Jaeger, 2000) can be used to describe how a landscape changes through time, and this information may then be used to evaluate alternative land management and environmental conservation strategies. This is very useful for planning efficient approaches for spatial development of landscapes, which can minimize adverse effects on the environment (O’Neill et al., 1997).
Therefore, to understand the relationship between landscape and changes in land use this study addresses the following questions: How did the intensity of land use change influence changes in landscape pattern and types? How did the natural and human landscape types respond to the land use change? The objective is to develop base data and provide scenarios for planners and decision makers to increase effectiveness in optimising land resources.
Section snippets
Study area
The state of Selangor (latitudes 2°35′–3°60′N and longitudes 100°45′–102°00′E) has an area of approximately 800,000 ha, along the west coast of peninsular Malaysia. It borders the states of Perak in the north, Negeri Sembilan in the south and Pahang in the east (Fig. 1). Selangor is the most populated state in Malaysia (along with Sabah and Sarawak in Borneo) with 3.9 million inhabitants in 2000. This is approximately 17% of Malaysia's total population (Department of Statistic Malaysia, 2001).
Land use change
Fig. 2 shows the patterns of change in each land use in the three temporal years. Generally, there were four land use categories that gradually reduced in proportion throughout the two periods. These are barrenland/bareland, forest, rubber, and wetland forest and marshland. In contrast, three categories of land use, mixed horticulture, oil palm, and urban and built-up area, showed an increase in their proportion and plantation forest only occurred in 1995.
In Period 1, barrenland/bareland,
Discussion
Spatial and temporal analyses were used to assess the changes in land use, and its influence on landscape pattern and types in three temporal years in the state of Selangor. The analyses showed that the intensity of human land use activities affects the landscape pattern of the study area. However, the other important finding was that it also influenced the dynamic changes in landscape types. In this study, increases in the intensity of human land use activities are defined as either having
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank to the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, Malaysia and the 21st Century of COE Project in Hiroshima University for providing financial support for this research. Two anonymous reviewers and Dr. Denis A. Saunders provided valuable comments that help us to further improve the earlier draft of this paper were also appreciated.
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