Abstract
Potential habitats of terrestrial animals have been mapped widely in the world, especially in the United States and Europe, fbr the purpose of nature conservation and landscape planning. In Japan, vegetation maps were prepared since 1973 by the Ministry of Environment. Then a vegetation map became one of the important base maps used in ecological planning. And the methods of mapping wildlife habitat were studied in many places over various species using GIS, which became more familiar tools to environmental researchers in the mid1990s, with those GIS data publications as vegetation maps and topological maps.
In this study, we have reviewed case studies of mapping potential habitats of terrestrial animals or landscape units using vegetation maps, in Japan. Then, we discuss over the situations and solutions of vegetation mapping in Japan, in terms of scale and data updating, classification of vegetation unit, applicability to pattern analysis, and accessibility of the map.
