2018 年 24 巻 p. 373-378
Recently the opportunity of child’s play in rivers is decreasing because of the change of their lifestyle as well as the natural environment. It is known that child’s play in nature contributes children’s health and growth, and MLIT started the project of “Children’s Watersides” which promotes child’s river use and enhances experimental activities. In this research, the activities of “Children’s Watersides” are investigated and the potentials of them are evaluated by considering individual river characteristics. The ratio of active “Children’s Watersides” is only 36% (85/236) in total. The persistency of the activity is greatly depending on population density; the continuity is 85% in the city with population density more than 6,000 people /km2. By focusing on the width of low water channel, it is clarified that the persistency of activities at 50-100m is low (15%) contrary to 25-50m (48%) and 100-200m (49%). Moreover, the characteristics of river banks have significant impacts on the activities. Therefore, we need to consider the management of “Children’s Watersides” depending on population density and river characteristics.
