EVALUATING SPATIAL PATTERNS AMONG FOREST TYPES IN PENINSULAR MALAYSIA USING FRAGSTATS

摘要

Forest plays an important role as habitat for flora and fauna. However, due to land use conversion activity conducted by human, the forest area are continually decreasing and facing fragmentation. This study is aimed to evaluate the spatial patterns and determine the status of fragmentation among three major forest types in Peninsular Malaysia namely inland forest, mangrove forest and peat swamps forest. The input data required are forest cover was generated from Landsat-8 imagery acquired throughout year 2016. The input data then was evaluated using an open source spatial statistical package software called FRAGSTATS. Ten landscape metrics consist of percentage land cover, number of patches, patch density, largest patch index, mean patch size, edge density, mean shape index, mean core index, mean nearest-neighbor distance and interspersion and Juxtaposition index were generated using FRAGSTATS. From the result obtained, we found that inland forest encounter the least fragmentation, followed by peat swamps forest and mangroves forest.