Abstract
There are five cities on the southern foor of Mt. Fuji and the adjacent regions. Urban and industrial areas of these cities have greatly expanded during 20 years since 1970. The role of the forest vegetation in the suburbs of these cities has recently become very important to maintain the environment in good condition for human life, under the rapid urbanization.
Environmental evaluation of Japanese black pice (Pinus thunbergii) forests which are distributed along the coast of the Suruga Bay and on a hill in the urban area is presented in this paper. The coastal pine forest spreads about 10 km long and 0.1 km wide, along the coast of the Senbonhama. The hill pine forest covers Mt. Kanukiyama, a hill in Numazu City, about 170 m above the sea level.
False color images were produced by the multi dimentional level-slice method of the Landsat TM data based on the measurement of the spectro reflectance of the pine leaves. They show that decline in growth and/or death of pine trees occurred in both the Senbonhama forest and in Mt. Kanukiyama forest during five years since 1986. Ground-truth was carried out to make detailed analyses concerning the results of the false color images.
It is concluded that, 1) decline of the pine trees in the coastal pine forest, recognized by Landsat TM data, is confirmed by the ground-truth, in which many declined old pine trees with thin leaves and a small number of the pine trees killed by the attack of destructive longicorn beetle (Monashamus alternates) were observed, 2) the pine forest of Mt. Kanukiyama had seriously destroyed by the attack of the longicorn beetle.
