Abstract
Land use is an important subject of geography, but it has largely been dealt with as a subordinate part of other subjects, such as urban geography or agricultural geography, Consequently, it has failed to make systematic progress, and nation-wide comprehensive studies have been rare.
The Land-use Working Group, which is responsible for the current symposium, was established five years ago as a study group, in order to organize land-use researchers for the enhancement of the traditional but then somewhat disorganized research field. The group has so far held ten meetings, including an international symposium which was convened three years ago.
Among the group's achievements are that land use has come to be recognized as an important research subject and that many land-use researchers, whose interests range from urban to rural and from Landsat to policy, were organized. The present symposium is intended to contribute to the exchange of information and views regarding various aspects of land-use change and its related problems, based on recent research achievements within and outside the working group.
The subjects of this symposium include land-use policy issues as well as more basic data collection and analysis, while the previous symposium was mainly concerned with the latter. It consists of the following four sub-themes:
(1) Provision and use of large-area data.
(2) Urban land-use change and its related problems.
(3) Rural land-use change and its related problems.
(4) Environmental management and planning.
