Study towards Integrating Secondary Forests into Future Land Use Development in Singapore for Biodiversity Objectives

Abstract

With past and continued loss of secondary forests in urban areas, this paper aims to assess the current distribution of secondary forests and evaluate the ecological values of secondary forests in terms of patch sizes, plant density and biodiversity values by using the analysis tools of GIS and FRAGSTATS. According to the analysis in this paper, over 1782 ha of secondary forest cover in Singapore has been lost due to the urbanization, such as residential and infrastructure development, in the past decade. It is estimated that about 7331 ha of secondary forests are planned to be cleared for new development. The future loss of secondary forests is about 1.2 times larger than the entire area of all parks and nature reserves in Singapore. It is shown that secondary forests became more fragmented compared with 2011, and more than 80% of patches are smaller than 1 ha. Most of the secondary forests’ patches are with high plant density and high biodiversity values in terms of ecological connection. Discussions towards the improvement of biodiversity and phase development planning for secondary forests in a tropical high-density city are addressed in this paper. There is lots of potential to integrate secondary forests into future land use developments for improving biodiversity based on the literature review and analysis results.