Multi-objective-based modeling for land use change analysis in the South West of Selangor, Malaysia

This study addresses resolution of a multi-objective land allocation problem and simulation of land change in the south west of Selangor state, Malaysia. The landscape experiences three conflicting objectives of land change, including urban/built-up development, oil palm development, and forest protection. The three conflicting objectives were simultaneously evaluated through developing three distinct sets of driving factors of land change to find a compromised solution to satisfy the requirements of all objectives. The likely patterns of land change were then simulated for the year 2020 based on transitions observed in two periods 1997–2002 and 1997–2008 under a modeling framework that integrates Multi-Criteria Evaluation (MCE), Cellular Automata (CA), and Markov chain analysis. Results showed that in multi-objective land allocation procedure the highest suitability values were given to urban development, oil palm development, and forest protection objective, respectively. Analysis of transition observed showed that although oil palm land use had experienced the highest expansion among other land classes until the year 2002, urban/urban related/built-up land category has experienced the biggest growth in the landscape between 2002 and 2008. Analysis of simulation results revealed that the urban/urban related/built-up areas would highly expand by the year 2020 at the expense of loss of other land categories. Simulations also showed that natural forest covers still could experience more loss than gain by the year 2020 while the loss rate would be lower than the period 2002–2008 but still higher than the period 1997–2002. Results demonstrated an ongoing, but lesser pressure on the natural rainforests in the coming years.