2011 Volume 67 Issue 5 Pages 67_I_389-67_I_398
In hilly and mountainous areas in Japan, there are many economically underproductive forests and farmlands that could have ecosystem service and produce social values. It is necessary to give quantitative evaluation of these areas with respect to their efficiency under severe financial situations.
This paper proposes the NOD (social Necessity Of Districts) indicator, which is the ratio of values of those artificial forests and farmlands to their maintenance cost at the forest ownership compartment level in Matsusaka City and Taki Town, the total value of ecosystem service level of artificial forests all over the areas has been estimated at 101 billion yen per year and the total maintenance cost at 5 billion yen per year. The optimal placement of foresters based on the distribution of NOD values can increase the total value of ecosystem service level approximately by 30 percent.
