The actual conditions of the market distribution of Japanese Rhododendron section Brachycaryx was investigated in Kanagawa Prefecture to reach guidelines for planting concerning genetic diversity in its natural habitat. We found that producers do not have obligations to show species names of plants after the survey at the wholesale market, and that growing environment of seed trees should cause the hybrid-plants after the survey at nurseries. There was little possibility of pollen introduction into natural habitat from nurseries in the study area after the analysis of geographic distribution of natural habitats, nurseries, and selling places. However, pollen exchange between natural habitats and nurseries may change the genetic heterogeneity in natural habitats in the case where nurseries are inside of the foraging range of main pollinators, and where the arrangement of nurseries in a landscape are suitable for pollinators to move. Concerning this state and these analyses, three problems to be solved were recognized : (1) Species name of plants is to be rightly recognized at the wholesale market, (2) Give care not to produce hybrid-plants, and (3) Species for cultivation is to be restricted at nurseries near natural habitats. Guidelines to solve these problems were devised : 1) Producers precisely identify the plants at nurseries, and 2) Species names identified by producers should be open to the public at the wholesale market, concerning issue (1), 3) Mix-planting of multi- (sub) species of seed trees is to be avoided at nurseries, and 4) Seeds for nursery plants should be collected from pure seed trees, concerning issue (2), and 5) Foraging range of major pollinators, Bombus species is to be surveyed, 6) Area inside the foraging range of main pollinators needs the special care not to cultivate the species that naturally survive, and 7) Species for cultivation should be restricted according to the arrangement of nurseries outside of the foraging range of major pollinators, concerning issue (3).

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A symphytosociological study for composition and structural analysis of green patches occurring in urban areas of Yokosuka, Kanagawa Prefecture was done using the unified methods of sigmassociation and mesh mapping. For classifying vegetation landscapes, we tried a new method in that a traditional vegetation-landscape analysis based on sigmassociation releves and an analysis by means of mesh mapping were united. Urban green areas in the study site were classified into various levels of vegetational landscape units by using the new method. As a result, the urban landscape region was classified into the Bryo-Sagino geosigmataxon. Moreover, the landscape region of green patches occurring on hill slopes was divided into the landscape unit of the RuboAralio=Daphno-Querco geosigmataxon. A division map of vegetational landscape in the study site was drawn using legends of the geosigmataxa that were integrated into the hyper geosigmataxa. An evaluation map of synthetic vegetational landscape in the study site was made using legends from these hyper geosigmataxa. The above-mentioned geosigmataxa and hyper geosigmataxa were analyzed by means of statistical procedure using numerical data and ecological features of those essential landscape units and these discussed in terms of spatial structures and functional relationships. The spatial structure of the vegetational landscapes in the investigation region were distributed over the sub-systems including green patches on hill slopes in a matrix of urban landscape.

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This paper discussed about the land use and landscape changes in the rural mountainous area since Meiji era (1890's) by introducing a case study done in Moroga village, Wakasa, Tottori Prefecture. In this study, GIS is successfully applied for the integration of various kinds of data such as aerial photos, topographic maps, vegetation map, forest planning maps, land ledgers as well as field survey records. The geo-spatial landscapes corresponding to each epoch over the past 100 years were reconstructed and mapped by the integrated analysis of the above spatial data, then the historical changes of land use concepts of village people in the mountainous area were depicted on GIS.

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Issues of nation-wide actual vegetation maps from the aspect for application were discussed from the historical point of views. In 1969, the first nation-wide actual vegetation maps drawn to a scale of 1 : 200, 000 were produced by the agency for cultural affairs, Japan. In 1973, the 1^st national survey on the natural environment Japan was started. Environment agency produced the same scale actual vegetation maps as a part of this survey. The main aim of these vegetation maps was to show the status of natural environment that destroyed by rapid economic development in those days as well as selecting lands that should have been protected immediately by setting up protected areas. During the 2^nd and the 3^rd national survey of the natural environment periods in 1980s, the actual vegetation maps at a scale of 1 : 50, 000 covered the whole land of Japan, and they were revised at the 4^th and the 5^th survey by applying the remote sensing data. The main purpose of these 1 : 50, 000 actual vegetation maps were the applications for regional planning and environmental impact assessment. However, the most remarkable application of them was designating wilderness areas and nature conservation areas. Since the 6^th national survey, vegetation mapping at a scale of 1 : 25, 000 were started. However, due to massive task for mapping and deficient budget, it is estimated that this project will be accomplished some 20-30 years later. Nowadays, the actual vegetation map is expected as basic information for nature conservation and restoration such as drawing ecotope maps and potential habitat maps of wildlife. But, the present status of the vegetation-mapping project is not reached to these kinds of expectation. From hence, vegetation classification map produced by remote sensing data interpretation is recommended to provide basic data for various usages as soon as possible. At the same time, efficient methods for mapping plant sociological actual vegetation map such as combination of remote sensing and expert knowledge is required to develop.

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In order to develop an accurate and quick method for drawing large-scale vegetation maps representing actual vegetation, a case study was implemented for a Japanese beech community in the Mt. Hyonosen and Mt. Ohginosen areas, of Tottori Prefecture, southwestern Japan. To map out the actual beech forest areas, as a first step, a vegetation prediction model was constructed to show the potential area of the natural beech community. The explanatory variables used in this model were GIS-based data layer sets, such as 10m resolution elevation maps, slope gradient, slope aspect, topographical configuration, soil moisture, accumulated amount of solar radiation and accumulated temperature. Next, areas representing both the broad-leafed forest and coniferous forest were interpreted from the 15 m resolution ASTER sensor satellite image. As a final step, the overlying of these maps produced the actualy area of beech community. Consequently, both the Data Producer's accuracy and the User's accuracy compared with natural beech community's area were approximately 50%. When compared with the natural beech communities and the broad-leafed forests area of the substitute plant communities the User's accuracy was 71%. According to these evaluations, the author has shown that this method is not sufficient for mapping the actual areas of the natural beech communities. However the results of this method were moderately satisfactory when used for large scale mapping of the actual area of both the natural beech communities and the broad-leafed forest of these substitute plant communities.

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This paper examines the effectiveness of ALOS AVNIR-2 imagery for the application of vegetation mapping. Two classification methods were applied; the maximum likelihood method as a pixel-based analysis and the object-based classification. The imagery taken by Landsat ETM was also analyzed for comparisons. The vegetation map produced by the object-based classification method using ALOS AVNIR-2 was most similar to the existing vegetation map by the aero photo interpretation. The accuracy assessment also showed that the vegetation map produced by the above method had the highest accuracy (0.606) in terms of Kappa coefficient. It can be considered that the higher spatial resolution (10m) of AVNIR-2 contributes to the more accurate detection of land cover objects, and the map can be used as a base map for vegetation survey.

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Potential habitats of terrestrial animals have been mapped widely in the world, especially in the United States and Europe, fbr the purpose of nature conservation and landscape planning. In Japan, vegetation maps were prepared since 1973 by the Ministry of Environment. Then a vegetation map became one of the important base maps used in ecological planning. And the methods of mapping wildlife habitat were studied in many places over various species using GIS, which became more familiar tools to environmental researchers in the mid1990s, with those GIS data publications as vegetation maps and topological maps.
In this study, we have reviewed case studies of mapping potential habitats of terrestrial animals or landscape units using vegetation maps, in Japan. Then, we discuss over the situations and solutions of vegetation mapping in Japan, in terms of scale and data updating, classification of vegetation unit, applicability to pattern analysis, and accessibility of the map.

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