Abstract
The policy of encouraging agriculture and development for mass tourism has led to environmental problems in Cameron Highlands, Malaysia. Rampant development and land clearing have significantly altered the land cover of Cameron Highlands for the past 30 years. Sensitive highlands areas are prone to landslides and soil erosion which then contributed to the main water pollution issues in the network of river system, sedimentation and siltation. The continuous trend of river water quality deterioration in Cameron Highlands has raised the issues for discussion in this review article. The purpose of this review is to briefly summarize the land use change, agriculture practices, agro-tourism, and agriculture policy and management toward water quality of the river system network in Cameron Highlands specifically in the downtown where most of the development and agriculture activities are concentrated. A rigorous review has been done on the existing literature to determine the relationship between land use change and agriculture practices toward river water quality in Cameron Highlands from 2001 to 2017. The total number of reviewed papers was 68. The outcomes established from previous researchers have highlighted factors such as soil erosion, landslides, agriculture activities, urbanization, and unplanned development associated with land use change have significantly influenced the river water quality in the highland areas. Continuous land use changes without proper development plan and law enforcement may critically threaten the sustainability of river network in the highlands area.
Highlights
Land use is the utilization of land resources by humans for various land activities and purposes such as for recreational, transport, agriculture, residential, and commercial (Rendana et al 2015)
We focused on the papers which are directly empirical and related with the keywords via detailed screening
Rampant land clearing for agriculture and urbanization purposes have shown a negative impact on the fragile highlands ecosystem
Summary
Land use is the utilization of land resources by humans for various land activities and purposes such as for recreational (park), transport (road and railway), agriculture (farm), residential (housing and settlements), and commercial (business and factories) (Rendana et al 2015). There are three main rivers that flow across Cameron Highlands which are the Telom River (37 km) at the north, Bertam River (20 km) at the middle, and Lemoi River (16 km) (Fig. 2) All these rivers flow eastward to form the Jelai River which fused with Tembeling River and form Pahang River (459 km), the longest river on Peninsular Malaysia and drains into the South China Sea (Khalik et al 2013a; RTD 2018a). This complex river system consists of 123 tributaries located within the Telom River and Bertam River These rivers serve as freshwater sources, hydroelectricity generation, and irrigation for agriculture purposes and are for recreational activities (Gasim et al 2009). Tourism and highland agriculture are the main economies driven in Cameron Highlands
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