Abstract
The Japanese forestry industry has been significantly affected by the increase in low-price timber imports and a diminishing work force. This has had a direct impact on the level of maintenance of the coniferous forests. Poorly maintained coniferous forests lose not only ability to produce timber but also to resist natural disaster. Therefore, a new management system for the forest is required. In this paper, we examine effective forest maintenance plans based on data from Landsat/TM imagery. The Inami town in Wakayama Prefecture was made to be case study object area. We examined regions in which coniferous forests experienced various levels of blight. Both sound and blighted coniferous forests were examined and the characteristics of each area quantified. Stock quantity of forest sound area and blighted area was estimated from the result got by the quantification of the forest area. As the result, the stock of all coniferous forest quantified 1,399,000m3.
