Malaysia is witnessing a rapid growth in the vicinity of urban cities with the construction of large engineering structures (e.g. towers, factories, high-rise condominiums, wide-span bridges and highways) to meet the requirement for the nation’s economic growth, societal activities and the aspirations of its population. This urbanization is the increase over time in the population of cities in relation to the regions rural population.
As we have stated, the growth of cities is frequently implicated in concerns about environmental deterioration. Almost half of the world’s population currently lives in urban areas, and for the foreseeable future, urbanization will increase (United Nations, 2001). What is more, urban growth – and population growth generally – in developing countries will outpace that in
industrialized countries. These urban areas, whether small towns or megacities, each develop an
environmental footprint. Although there are important regional differences in the level and trend
of urbanization, city growth has proceeded steadily throughout the developing world (Chen et al,1998).
As we recounted at the outset, many policy makers, government officials, and the like have a negative view of urbanization, who see urban growth as problematic. Environmental concerns would serve to reinforce these overall urban growth concerns. Yet, there is a positive association of urbanization and urban economic development with overall economic growth (NRC, 2003). However, the rapid rise of urbanization has giving more impacts into forest area.

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The forest can be define as a woods or the woods and less often as a “wold” (or “weald”), “holt”, or “frith” (or “firth”), is an area with a high density of trees. For the best define to the forest as an ecosystem or assemblage of ecosystems dominated by trees and other woody vegetation. But in Malaysia, it hard to define about forest. It is because there is a lack of good-quality data about the definition of a forest, the extent of forest cover, loss of forest, (un)sustainable yields, and so on in Malaysia. The official definition of a forest used in Malaysia differs from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) definition, which excludes areas under agricultural crops (e.g. oil palm). In Malaysia, however, the areas under oil palm, rubber and tree crops are frequently regarded as forest. The question of the definition of forests is particularly significant in the Malaysian context where the Malaysian forests are rapidly disappearing and, conversely, ‘forest’ plantations areas are expanding (JOANGOHutan, September 2006).
Malaysia currently has 32.8 million hectares of land area, of which 24.8 million hectares – 75.5 per cent of total land – are classified as forest and tree cover. Of these, 19.5 million hectares are forest cover and 5.3 million hectares are tree cover. Of the total forest cover, 9.2 million hectares (47.4 per cent) are found in Sarawak, 5.9 million hectares (30.1 per cent) are found in Peninsular Malaysia and 4.4 million hectares (22.5 per cent) in Sabah. Sabah claims it has the least forest(JOANGOHutan, September 2006). Although Malaysia is known as the equatorial rain forests of the world due to its location mapped and it`s forested, but the historical fact that the year of between 1990 and 2005 Malaysia lost 6.6% of its forest cover, or around 1, 486 000 hectares. As showed at table 1 for the information about the forest cover in Malaysia , 2010.
Of course we know that forests bring many benefits to human life, flora and fauna. Right now, the degradation of forest frequently lately happened. It similarly, the same case in Kelantan. Kelantan is the one of the states in Peninsular Malaysia with the largest forest reserve. Unfortunately, the forest in there more to bare area because of deforestation and encroachment activities. Thus, a forest-related law has been established under the amended legislation 313 ( AKTA PERHUTANAN NEGARA 1984).
Deforestation and increased road-building in the Kelantan are a significant concern because of increased human encroachment upon wild areas, increased resource extraction and further threats to biodiversity. Deforestation is the removal of a forest or stand of trees where the land is thereafter converted to a nonforest use. Examples of deforestation include conversion of forestland to agriculture or urban use.
Deforestation occurs for many reasons: trees or derived charcoal are used as, or sold, for fuel or as timber, while cleared land is used as pasture for livestock, plantations of commodities, and settlements. The removal of trees without sufficient reforestation has resulted in damage to habitat, biodiversity loss and aridity. It has adverse impacts on biosequestration of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Deforested regions typically incur significant adverse soil erosion and frequently degrade into wasteland.
The continuing demand for urbanization in Malaysia in the next few decades of this century suggests the need for planning and implementation on forest area plans or programs which is going to be even more complex in the future than it has been in the past. Environmental impacts from deforestation such as slope erosion, mass movements, sediment yield and decreasing water quality may be expected in the continuous development of the urbanization (Khairlmaini & Fauza,2010).
So that, all the urbanization and deforestation, there have relate to environment implication factor. How much the urbanization of Kelantan is make it and it`s impacts to environmental implication factor? The example environment implication factor can be relate here such as heating temperature, landslide or slope erosion, and loss of natural habitats. Because of that, this paper addresses the issues and challenges affecting comprehensive and holistic outlook towards urbanization. Right now, researcher more concentrates the effect of urbanization in Kelantan and its decreasing of forest area or knowing as deforestation.
Remote sensing and Geographic Information System (GIS) are providing new tools for advancing ecosystem management. (Both of these tools has its own privileges. By viewing the lack of data analysis on the impact of the reduction of forest development, this thesis is done with the help of the two tools above to solve the problems.)
In recent years, as a spatial database management system (DBMS), the Geographic Information System (GIS) has developed powerful tools for visualizing data (Peters and MacDonald, 2004; Fisher and Unwin, 2005; Liao et al., 2010). This development naturally leads to the emergence of new sub-disciplines or interdisciplines and one of them is Historical GIS, in which the GIS provides the investigation tool to study past phenomena, including demographic patterns, changes in land use and geopolitical scenarios (Gregory and Ell, 2007; Knowles, 2008). Since Historical GIS in Malaysia is still relatively lacking, this study was conducted to apply GIS to visualize the effect of urbanization on the forest area in Kelantan.
Area estimation through remote sensing is often used for classification and production of crops statistics. This effort was demonstrated in the past by Gonzales-Alonso et al.(1991), Gallego and Delice (1993), Gonzales-Alonso and Cuevas (1993) and Ferencz et al.(2004). Integration of ground data and classification of remote sensing data is shows a greatest operational feasibility and economical interest that contribute for the benefits of the global society. Remote sensing data has the potential and the ability to provide spatial information at global scale; of features and phenomena on earth on an almost real-time basis.
1.2 BACKGROUD OF STUDY AREA
Malaysia is situated in the Southeast Asia, between latitudes 1 o and 7o north, and longitudes 100o and 119o east. The regions in Malaysia are divided into six regions. There are four regions in Peninsular Malaysia (West Malaysia), and two regions in North Borneo (East Malaysia). The four regions in Peninsular Malaysia are the northern region (Perlis, Kedah, Perak, and Pulau Pinang), the central region (Selangor, Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur, Negeri Sembilan, and Melaka), the Eastern region (Kelantan, Terengganu and Pahang), and the southern region, which consists of just one state, Johor. The two regions in East Malaysia are the Sabah region, which consists of Sabah, and the Sarawak region, which consists of Sarawak. The surface area or total landmass is about 329,847 km2 (127,350 sq mi).
The State of Kelantan lies in the north-east of Peninsular Malaysia. The capital and royal seat is Kota Bharu. It is bounded on the western side by the State of Perak and Thailand, it shares it southern and eastern boundaries with the States of Pahang and Terengganu and is bounded on the north-east by the South-China Sea(P.G. PAK-POY & ASSOCIATES (M) SDN BHD etc ,1981). The State contains a fertile alluvial plain, ideal for crops such as rice, tobacco, fruits and vegetables.
Besides coinciding with a national administrative boundary, the physical boundary of Kelantan can be described in topographical terms as a “geographical entity”. It is separated, even isolated, from the neighbouring States of Perak, Pahang and Terengganu by mountains rising to over 7,000 ft. (2,160 m) on its western and southern borders, and to over 4,000 ft. (1,230 m) on portions of its eastern border. It has a narrow coastal plain where unrestrained movements of population and goods occur both into and out of the State(P.G. PAK-POY & ASSOCIATES (M) SDN BHD etc ,1981).
Kelantan covers an area of 14,922 sq. km which is 4.4 percent of the total area of Malaysia, and is administratively divided into ten districts: Kota Bharu, Pasir Mas, Tumpat, Pasir Puteh, Bachok, Kuala Krai, Machang, Tanah Merah, Jeli and Gua Musang.