Abstract
About 30 years' land-use changes occurred in the coastal area of the Lake Biwa were analysed with 1/25, 000 national topographic maps. The 37.2% of the area was occupied by the rice-field in the middle of 1950's, which decreased to 30.6% by 1985. In the same period of time, the mulberry field decreased from 1.9% to 0.3%, lakelets' area from 3.2% to 1.9%, while the urbanized area increased from 8.9% to 19.2%. The increase of urban areas in the southern part of coastal area, from 11.7% to 29.7%, was the greatest among the study areas. A large number of lakelets in the eastern coast of Lake Biwa were reclaimed by 1970.
