Content Introduction

Phenomena of Land Use Changes

Mapping of Land Use Changes

Methods

Primary Results and Discussions

• LULC maps

• Issues and challenges

Conclusion

Cameron Highlands - Green Bowl of Malaysia because it is the main

vegetables producer terraced vegetation (vegetables, flowers, and

tea).

The most popular vegetables are English cabbage, Chinese cabbage,

tomato, lettuce, onion, snow peas, celery, spinach, tong ho, beans,

mustard, capsicum, and radish + other land uses are developed for

tourism, residential area, highways, dam, and forest reserve.

The increasing impact of land use changes on the sustainability

of the environment and on the livelihood of the population have

become an issue of concern both in the developed and the

developing countries.

Malaysia land use changes process is contributed mainly by

urbanization process, logging, mining and agricultural production

dominant activities in rural region and/or in urban fringe.

Changes are needed for the nation to progress need a proper

monitoring system and compliance to existing development guidelines.

Without proper monitoring environmental issues and concerns +

escalading incidence of natural and human-induced disasters including

landslides, floods and land degradation in rural and urban fringe areas.

This paper attempts to address the prevailing development issues and

challenges derived from the land use changes in Cameron Highlands,

Pahang, Malaysia.

To explore the potential use of advanced and modern geospatial

technology to produce land-use-land-cover (LULC) map to: (1) identify

features of land-use-land-cover, (2) to analyses land use changes and (3)

to detect activities that contribute towards deforestation, soil degradation

and other disaster-related events.

Phenomena of Land Use

Changes

Mapping and Monitoring of Land Use Changes

Causal effect development activities + modern

agriculture technology increase demand for food

pressure to land conversion deforestation, soil

degradation, resource depletion increasing incidence

of natural and human induced disaster affecting

livelihood and environment.

Methods

Adopt an interdisciplinary

and collaborative research

approach technique.

Commonly applied to studies

on environmental and land

use changes able to

integrate information, data,

tools, perspectives and

concepts from two or more

different fields/disciplines of

research - Gbenga (2008)

and Elmqvist (2006).

Interdisciplinary and

collaborative approach could

enhance research findings and

improve fundamental

understanding on subject

matter and might provide

solutions that are beyond the

scope of a single

field/discipline of research

Geospatial technology

(temporal satellite images/GIS)

Social Science approach

(fieldwork and survey)

Land-Use-Land- Cover (LULC)

changes research

Field survey on land use changes

Land-Use-Land- Cover (LULC) changes:

mapping and analysis

The study developed an object-oriented method for mapping and monitoring the

changes of land-use-land-cover (LULC) in a complex environment. Temporal

satellite images (2001-2014) are intensively used to produce a series of LULC

maps.

Class DescriptionPrimary forest Primary forest in Cameron Highlands consists of lowland evergreen rainforest, lower montane

forest and upper montane forest. The trees are mostly tall and closed canopy. In the naturalcolor (RGB) setting, the image of primary forest was observed as darker green.

Secondary forest The undergrowth or secondary forest is commonly smaller and shorter than primary forest suchas shrubs, bushes, bamboos and vegetation. From the satellite image, the secondary forest haslighter color than the primary forest (e.g. lighter green in natural color).

Agriculture Cameron Highlands is famous producing fresh vegetables and flowers that are terraces along theslopes. The cultivated land is covered with plastic to reduce soil erosion. Thus, the satelliteimagery of this area appears shiny white color unlike the image of usual plantation area.However, tea plantation is not covered with plastics, which makes the image is distinctive fromother agricultures.

Urban / Settlement The urban area includes settlements, roads and buildings.

Bare soil This area consists of exposed land and landslides.

Water bodies This area represents lakes and river.

Results and

Discussions

Land use map for Cameron Highlands in year 2005 (Left) and in year 2014 (Right)

Class Distribution Summary

Class Distribution (%)Year 2005 Year 2014

Primary Forest 79.19 *59.99

Secondary Forest 4.68 **16.50

Agriculture 12.82 12.18

Bare Soil 0.53 1.49

Urban / Settlement 2.74 **9.14

Water Bodies 0.04 0.70

Percentage of land cover classes in 2005 and 2014 in

Cameron Highlands, Pahang

Land use changes in CH: Issues/challenges

We can no longer afford to ignore climate

change causing heatwaves, wildfires,

increased drought, reduced agricultural yields,

water scarcity, flooding, erosion and poorer air

quality in the US (NASA).

Without a doubt, human activity is the dominant

cause of climate change. Economic

development and population growth around the

world have led to atmospheric concentrations of

greenhouse gases that the planet hasn’t seen in

800,000 years.

By 2100, 100 million people could be displaced,

making the current refugee crisis seem small. To

give you another idea of scale, rising sea levels

could swamp every city on the east coast of the

US. The price tag for all of this is estimated to

come to roughly 20 percent of global GDP.

Conclusion

The geospatial technology is increasingly being used

to study land use and land cover changes and to

identify changes that has occur through different land

use activities which may have negative impact on the

sustainability of the environment and biodiversity

protection and conservation.

Preliminary result (LULC map) forested

area in Cameron Highlands is decreasing

significantly in 10 years but agriculture and

urbanization regions are increasing.

This study recommended that land use

changes influenced by human activities

should be continuously monitored using

advanced and modern geospatial

technology.

Establishment of special area planning at

every sub-districts of CH to regulate land

use changes towards SD at grassroots

level.