Changes in landscape spatial pattern in the highly developing state of Selangor, peninsular Malaysia

Abstract

In Malaysia, rapid changes in land use invariably portrayed have a relationship with environmental degradation. However, this has always been stated without any quantitative measurement for understanding the relationship in order to describe implications for land use planning and management. To understand the relationship this study addresses landscape pattern and landscape type responses to changes in land use in the state of Selangor, Malaysia as a case study. Three land use maps representing the years of 1966, 1981 and 1995 were used in this study. These maps were divided into 100 grid squares with each grid square has 10 km × 10 km dimension. These grid squares were used as a sampling unit for land use and landscape pattern change analyses. Based on proportion of land use categories, the landscape type of each grid square was determined. Results show that between 1966 and 1981 only one land use category significantly changed ( p < 0.05) in its proportion compared to five land use categories between 1981 and 1995. This indicates that human land use intensity increased between 1981 and 1995. As response to the intensity of land use change, fragmentation (measured by number of patches and mean patch size metrics) and diversity (measured by relative patch richness metric) of the state's landscape increased from 1981 to 1995. Changes in land use also influenced the landscape types and its dynamic of change. Two categories of landscape types; human landscape (cropland, semi-natural and mixed landscapes) and natural landscape (forest and wetland landscapes) characterized the state landscape. Based on the number of grid squares human landscape increased over the period, whereas natural landscape decreased. Between 1966 and 1981, change from one landscape type to another was predominantly occurred in human landscape. Between 1981 and 1995, change was mainly occurred in the natural landscape. Developmental activities might have been less intense in the human landscape, but they had a much greater impact on the natural ecosystem. This study also revealed the potential of landscape type as a reference for land evaluation and complement to landscape metric as measurement for monitoring changes in a landscape. Finally, we conclude that it is important to understand the changes of land use intensification and its effects on landscape pattern as well as landscape types and their dynamic of change in order to describe the implications for land use planning and management.