Spatio‐temporal Aspects of Land Use and Land Cover Changes in the Niah Catchment, Sarawak, Malaysia

Bibliographic Data

ID20153428
AuthorsTina Svan Hansen (Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies, corresponding author)
Year2005
Volume26
Issue2
Pages170-190
Publication date2005-07-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueSingapore Journal of Tropical Geography (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0129-7619 • E-ISSN: 1467-9493
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/j.0129-7619.2005.00212.x
OpenAlexW2108747971
LanguageEN
Citations received6
References cited20

This paper focuses on the large‐scale land use and land cover changes that have taken place in Sarawak state, East Malaysia over the three decades of 1972‐2002. Results are presented from a detailed land use and cover change (LUCC) study in the Niah River catchment using satellite imagery, questionnaire surveys and interviews. Successive waves of land cover changes have taken place. Large forest areas have been logged and gradually replaced by oil palm plantations, which now occupy more than 40 per cent of the total land area in the catchment. Concurrently, small‐scale farming systems have also changed. Formerly dominant Iban shifting cultivation practices are increasingly being replaced by cash crop production on permanent fields and impacted by off‐farm activities involving many ethnic groups. It is argued that land cover changes are continuous and complex processes involving a large number of variables which can be analysed for different time periods at various scales

Agriculture · Archaeology · Cartography · Cash crop · Drainage basin · Geography · Land cover · Land use · Physical geography · Scale (ratio) · Shifting cultivation · Conservation, Biodiversity, and Resource Management · Ecology · Livestock Farming and Management · Oil Palm Production and Sustainability