Abstract
Political and research trends after the Second World War in terms of forest outdoor education were first investigated by reviewing Japanese political reports and research articles. As a result, we found that there have been few discussions, especially in forest planning, on providing outdoor educational opportunities. Also, it is clarified that one of the most urgent matters in Japan is to develop a geographical analysis method for forest management in terms of outdoor education. Therefore a case study to develop such a method was conducted in Ushiku City, Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan. In this study, (1) all facilities which require forests as venues for outdoor educational activities and (2) all forests which can be used for outdoor educational activities in Ushiku City were identified. Then, the geographical distribution patterns of the facilities and the forests were analyzed by the ‘Five-kilometer by Five-kilometer Filtering Method’, which is one of the grid analyzing methods based on the Japanese standard third-grid unit, which is almost the same as onekilometer by one-kilometer grid unit. This method provides information on the geographical supply demand relationship between the facilities and the forests. And we concluded that the method developed in this study is useful for forest planners to make an efficient forest distribution plan for outdoor educational activities.
