Landscape and Urban Planning 87 (2008) 147–155 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Landscape and Urban Planning journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/landurbplan Changes in agricultural landscape pattern and its spatial relationship with forestland in the State of Selangor, peninsular Malaysia Saiful Arif Abdullah a,b,∗ , Nobukazu Nakagoshi a a Graduate School for International Development and Cooperation, Hiroshima University, 1-5-1 Kagamiyama Higashi, Hiroshima City 739-8529 Japan b Institute for Environment and Development (LESTARI), Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 43600 Bangi, Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia article info Article history: Received 9 April 2007 Received in revised form 3 February 2008 Accepted 14 May 2008 Available online 26 June 2008 Keywords: Agricultural expansion Oil palm Landscape type Malaysia Tropical landscape abstract In Malaysia, the development of two major agricultural crops, i.e. oil palm and rubber, is one of the primary causes of forest loss. However, understanding of this relationship has not been quantified, which is vital to improve the planning and management of the agricultural land uses. To understand the relationship, this study addresses their dynamic change, patchiness and spatial relationship with forestland in the State of Selangor, Malaysia as a case study. Data development and analysis were based on three land-use maps of 1966, 1981 and 1995 where forest and, wetland forest and marshland land use categories were referred to as forestland. Two defined natural landscapes; forest and wetland landscapes were used as a basic unit of analysis to determine the patchiness of the agricultural lands at the expense of large tract of forestland. During the periods studied, oil palm area increased whereas rubber area reduced. The development of oil palm had caused loss much of forestland, particularly wetland forest and marshland. Its expansion at the expense of large tract of wetland forest and marshland earnestly occurred between 1966 and 1981 but slowed down between 1981 and 1995. By using the landscape type approach this study recommended a way to determine the patchiness of the agricultural lands at the expense of large tract of forestland. With these findings, we conclude that it is important to understanding the relationship quantitatively in order to describe the implications for land development of the agricultural crops. © 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction In many parts of the world agricultural land plays a major role in shaping the landscape mosaic (Medley et al., 1995; H ¨ ardter et al., 1997; McConnell et al., 2004). Between 1980 and 2001 land used for permanent agriculture crops increased by approximately 35% (FAO, 2003). Nonetheless, this is particularly occurred in developing trop- ical countries (Hall, 2000), where it also has been recognised as one of the major proximate causes of deforestation (Hall, 2000; Cardille and Foley, 2003; Grau et al., 2005; Pacheco, 2006). At the global scale 96% of deforestation is associated with agricultural expan- sion (Geist and Lambin, 2002). Although the clearance of forest into agricultural land is still continuous, estimation on how much it has been converted is still vague (e.g. Laurance, 1999). Malaysia is a developing country where agriculture is an impor- tant component of land use. Although developmental policy has been shifted from the agricultural sector to focus on the manufac- ∗ Corresponding author at: Institute for Environment and Development (LESTARI), Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 43600 Bangi, Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia. Tel.: +60 3 89214151; fax: +60 3 89255104. E-mail address: saiful arif2002@yahoo.com (S.A. Abdullah). turing sector since the 1980s, agriculture is still crucial to promote the economic development of the country. In 2000, for example, agriculture covered about 18% of the total land area, which con- stituted an increase of approximately 4% from 1995 (Economic Planning Unit Malaysia, 2001). In the same year, agriculture con- tributed about 8.7% of the total gross domestic product, which was third after the manufacturing and service sectors (Economic Planning Unit Malaysia, 2001). Historically, in the early to mid of the 20th century Malaysian agriculture was mainly dependent on rubber (Sekhar, 2000). By the 1950s about 1.5millionha of Malaysian land were covered by rubber plantations, the expansion of which was spearheaded by the growth of the world automobile and transport industry (Simeh and Ahmad, 2001). At the same time, however, synthetic rubber was introduced, which subsequently led to the fall of rubber prices resulting in the depression of Malaysia’s economy. To address the problem the government introduced the crop diversification pro- gramme. In this programme, oil palm was selected as the prime crop (Jaafar, 1994). Oil palm was introduced into the country in 1911 and the first commercial plantation commenced in 1917 (Singh, 1976). Since the introduction of the programme, areas of rubber planta- tions reduced and oil palm plantations expanded throughout the nation. 0169-2046/$ – see front matter © 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.landurbplan.2008.05.008