Urban landscape Planning

Landscape architecture improves urban spaces and the quality of life of the people living and working in those spaces. It promotes sustainability and helps create healthier, more beautiful and more livable neighborhoods. It fights pollutants and encourages city dwellers to spend time outside, which is better for their health and for the community.

Flora and Fauna

Forest area in Peninsular Malaysia consists of tropical rainforest. The structure of the low-land forest in Peninsular Malaysia is layered. The layer consisting of scrawny trees, major crown, plant ground and plants that grow on the land surface. Trees at the scrawny layer can reach a height of 60m to 70m. 

Most of these trees are from the Dipterocarpaceae and Leguminosae family. Diterocarpaceae is often associated with commercial timber trees such as balau, cengal, kapur, keruing, meranti, merawan, mersawa and seraya. The main crown layer consists of various plants from different family such as, kedondong, kandis, penarahan and kelat with the height of between 20m and 40m. On the ground, there are small trees and palm which thrives under the crown. In the forest ground, there are seedlings, palms and herbs.

Tropical rainforest in Malaysia can be divided into two classes which are the mixed forest and single dominant forest. Mixed forest like the dipterokarpa forest consists of various plants from different families while single dominant forest is visible in species like lime single dominant forest (dryobalanops aromatica) in Kanching, Selangor. It is a mixture of different species in terms of the composition of the flora and it changes according to habitat.

Based on the elevation above sea level, this forest can also be classified as flat dipterokarpa forest, hill dipterokarpa forest, top dipterokarpa forest, oak forest and mountain ericaceous forest. Dipterokarpa is a group of trees of the dipterokarpa family which exist in the canopy layer of the forest and the major crown part of the forest. Dipterokarpa forest covers all forest or land at the foot of the hill with the height of up to 30m. Hill Dipterokarpa Forest is forest on the hills between the heights of 30m and 762m, while forests between the heights of 762m and 1200m are top dipterokarpa forest. Oak forest is between the heights of 1200m to 1500m. Forest above 1500m is known as mountain ericaceous forest. 

The forest covers a land area of 5.79 million hectares which is 44 percent of the land area of the Peninsular, with 4.89 million hectares of which are forest reserves. Sarawak still retains 80 percent of its forest with products from the forests which remains at 6 million hectares and 1 million hectares are forest reserves. In Sabah, 4.7 million hectares or 63 percent of the total area are covered by forests with an area of more than 3.6 million hectares of forest reserves or about 49.1 percent of the area of Sabah.

Malaysia’s rainforest is the habitat to the biological diversity of flora and fauna from the smallest microscopic organisms and bacteria and to the largest species such as mammals, fish and birds. Todate, there are more than 17,631 species of plants which include 377 algae, 1,387 briofit (prophytes), 1,600 paku pakis or ferns, 61  gimnospirm, 4,180 monokot (monocots) and 10,026 dikot (dicots) have been recorded. The fauna species recorded include 480 mammals, 742 birds, 242 amphibian, 567 reptiles, 590 freshwater fish, 1,967 butterflies and 1,073 leaf beetles or kumbang daun. Among the mammalian species which live in the forest in Malaysia are the orang utans, tigers, elephants, rhinoceros, tapirs, wild buffaloes, foxes, leopards, bears and two types of deer namely sambar and kijang. Tiger is the world’s largest cat species and is found only in Southeast Asia, especially in Malaysia. It comes from the family of Felidae in carnivorous order. The Siberian Tiger is the largest subspecies 

and can grow up to 3.3 metres long and weighs 300kg, while the Sumatra Tiger is the smallest subspecies with an average size of 2.4 metres long and weigh 120 kg. Other special animal that can be found in Malaysia is “monyet belanda”. In addition, there are nearly 600 kinds of birds which are recorded in the Peninsular Malaysia and 580 species in Borneo.

Besides land animals, there is also the existence of fresh water fish species. Freshwater fish is among the famous fish in Malaysia and it consists of Arowana, silver catfish, tilapia, carp, toman and snakehead. The habitat of deep sea fish in Malaysia is very attractive with a variety of fishes such as lionfish, also known as the zebrafish and clown fish. Coral reefs that have existed for more than 450 million years have become the richest marine ecosystem. It is the habitat for more than a million marine living species. The fish density in the area is 100 times higher compared to the wide sea. Malaysia is recognised as one of the twelve mega-biodiversity countries of the world which have outlined the direction in sustaining and conserving biodiversity in the country through the National Biodiversity Policy in 1998.