Estimation of Potential Natural Vegetation by Means of GIS

Abstract

To discribe the relationship between natural vegetation types of Japanese Islands (classified into 9 major types) and its environmental factors, Logit models were constructed by the analysis on Evironmental Geographic Information System (EGIS).
Through these Logit Models, the distributions of 9 potential natural vegetation zones in Japanese Islands were estimated, and classified into a database, which contain particular actual vegetation distribution patterns.
Using this result, human impacts on each vegetation zone were evaluated. For example, alpine vegetation zone is occupied only by naturalvegetation, and on the otherhand, hilly warm temparate vegetation zone is characterized by the distribution of coppice forest and urbanized land use in its actual situation. Result of Analysis suggests the necessity of reestablishing the EGIS including more detailed environmental informations.