THE INFLUENCE OF LAND-USE LAND-COVER CHANGES ON URBAN BIRD COMMUNITIES

Abstract. City development changes the landscape and has been claimed to pose threat to the survival of birds that heavily relies on healthy forest ecosystem. As such, this study assessed the effect of land-use land-cover (LULC) changes due to sub-urbanisation on birds’ community using geostatistical method. In this study, geostatistical analyses, namely Kernel Density and Ordinary Least Square (OLS), were executed to identify the dominant factors that affected the birds’ community in the Johor Bahru region. The birding data were obtained from eBird, an online crowd source database of bird distribution. The distribution of bird community was analysed by using Kernel density for years 2016 and 2018. This study found that the hotspot locations of the birds were in Danga Bay and Kempas Denai for year 2016, whereas Kampung Pok, Bukit Chagar, Taman Sentosa and Kampung Dato Sulaiman Menteri for year 2018. Certain urban bird species increased from year 2016 to 2018. The OLS regression was applied to analyse the relationship between birds’ occurrence and LULC features within the study area. The global regression model indicated that distance to forest and distance to recreational and open space were positively associated with the number of bird occurrence. On the contrary, distance to road was negatively associated with the number of bird occurrence. The OLS model for year 2016 between birds’ occurrence and distance to road, distance to forest, as well as distance to recreational and open space, demonstrated an adjusted R2 value of 0.32. In year 2018, the correlation between birds’ occurrence and distance to road, as well as distance to recreational and open space, demonstrated an adjusted R2 value of 0.11. As a conclusion, urbanisation seems to affect the birds’ communities as it increases the number of urban birds spotted in Johor Bahru, which is attributed to the increasing recreational and open space areas in Johor Bahru. The study outcomes can be applied to comprehend the relationship between birds’ community and LULC changes, as a result of urbanisation.