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SPATIO‐TEMPORAL ASPECTS OF LAND USE AND LAND COVER CHANGES IN THE NIAH CATCHMENT, SARAWAK, MALAYSIA
Author(s) -
Hansen Tina Svan
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
singapore journal of tropical geography
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.538
H-Index - 42
eISSN - 1467-9493
pISSN - 0129-7619
DOI - 10.1111/j.0129-7619.2005.00212.x
Subject(s) - geography , land cover , cash crop , land use , scale (ratio) , drainage basin , agriculture , shifting cultivation , physical geography , ecology , cartography , archaeology , biology
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.