Ecosystem services (ESSs) are benefits provided to humans for free. Although the growing awareness of its importance, there is still little information available on its true monetary values which are evaluated on a basis of people who get benefits from such ecosystems. Thus, understanding how local people value the ESSs' functions will allow municipalities to make conservation plans and strategies even more effective and desirable. In order to quantify the effects of ESSs, online survey – intended for people who are aged from 20s to 60s, living the area that uses water from Lake Biwa, Shiga prefecture – was administered. In Lake Biwa, water conservation forests have significant roles in purifying water, reducing the disaster risk and providing species richness. Then, we analyzed the data using conditional and mixed logit models. As a result, the willingness to pay for the function of water purification, mitigation of disaster scale and damage, biodiversity conservation and timber production were estimated at 503, 266, 323 and 212 JPY respectively. It then represents that non-monetary ESSs like water purification and biodiversity play significant roles in forests in Lake Biwa.

In this study, we examined the flowering and fruiting characteristics of Quercus phillyraeoides and Q. glauca at 3, 5, and 11 years after logging in binchō charcoal wood forests in Japan. We surveyed flowering in four stands in spring 2014, and fruiting in three stands in autumn 2015. The mean height and mean stem base diameter were greater in Q. glauca than in Q. phillyraeoides at all but one site. For Q. phillyraeoides, we observed flower set and fruiting in 3 and 4 years, respectively, and for Q. glauca, we observed fruiting in 4 years. The minimum heights of individual flowering trees was 0.55 m in Q. phillyraeoides. The minimum heights of individual fruiting trees were 0.96 and 2.17 m in Q. phillyraeoides and Q. glauca, respectively. The ratio of flowering and fruiting individuals was higher in Q. phillyraeoides than in Q. glauca at all sites where flowering and fruiting were observed. These results imply that Q. phillyraeoides and Q. glauca may exhibit reproductive precocity in starting seed production during the early growth stage, and flowering and fruiting start earlier in Q. phillyraeoides than in Q. glauca.