Landscape Ecological Structure of Peri-Urban Agricultural Area in Bangkok Metropolitan Region

Abstract

Bangkok, the only primate city of Thailand, has been developed it the fringes into the surrounding provinces rapidly. Within these past decade, the floodplain of Choa Phraya River has been transformed from wet rice and agricultural patches toward new land use development known as “city scape”. Bangkok urbanisation and unpredicted urban sprawl patterns consequently altered landscape structure and sensitively changed the ecological pattern of the existing peri-urban agricultural areas. The urbanisation process also lead to the loss of productive landscape around Bangkok. This paper classify and analyse landscape structures of eight selective sites on the Bangkok’s fringe. By tracing over the landscape patterns from satellite imageries on 2017, and site surveyings, the authors categorised seven peri- urban agriculture landscape characteristics. The result includes rice paddy, rice paddy with orchard dike, lotus pond, ditch and dike farming, aquaculture farming, salt farming, and raised-bed greenhouse farming. The most rapid urbanisation area showing the significant loss in agricultural areas with remaining only 20% of green area. While the less develop area maintaining the green space over 70%. The degradation of these highly adaptive peri-urban agricultural patches reduce ecosystem services of the city and there fringe.