Detection of deforestation and analysis land conversion from high resolution satellite imageries in Bintulu District, Serawak, Malaysia

Abstract Primary forests are continuously threatened day to day by urbanisation and the conversion to agricultural plantation such as palm oil production and other land uses being one of the major reasons. In South-East Asia, the widespread of oil palm has boomed over the last two decades, resulting in the downfall of tropical forest land. This change has been particularly prevalent in Borneo with protected lands increasingly developed for palm oil and already deforested lands are being converted into industrial plantations. The primary concerns relating to this pattern of land use change are the short and long-term impacts of logging on our natural environments and ecosystems and how patterns of deforestation are contributing to global environment issues such as climate change. By detecting and mapping logging activities, forestry departments are better able to predict land cover changes in a particular region as a result of development and deforestation. In this study, land cover assessment based on remote sensing techniques was used to analyse changes in the Bintulu district, Borneo especially oil palm growth and its influence on the decline of forest areas between 2016 and 2018. High resolution satellite imageries (3 m spatial resolution) from PlanetScope were used due to the benefits in helping to differentiate several land cover classes over a higher spatial resolution. Results showed that a decline of primary forests in Bintulu is about 26.5% over the past 2 years. With that decline, comes a rise of oil palm growth by 17.6% just within 2 years. An increased in logged areas (36.1%) for conversion to other land-covers with a steady decline of other land cover classes by at least 20% each year was detected. The accuracy of results proved a reasonable accuracy with 90.0% confidence with satellite imagery. Thus, with the result a necessary step can be considered to monitor and prevent deforestation and various encroachment in the forest. With high-resolution satellite data, monitoring at local scales has become possible to resource managers as a way to create timely and reliable assessments.