Forest resources in Japan have reached a mature stage. Since the dawn of history, Japan has never seen such rich stock, and they are proud. However, both of the forest types, plantation forest and natural forest, have their own problems. Since the earth summit in 1992, the discussion on criteria and indicators has been continued on the platform of Montreal Process at a national level to include countries in the Pacific region, such as Japan, from the aspects of resources, environment and society in order to measure sustainability and to integrally observe their sustainability. At the level of forestry entity, forest certification systems like ISO14001 or FSC have been introduced to check the status or sustainability of forest management and forest products.

The most serious issue in forest management is the inaccurate forest border. A cadastral survey has not been sufficiently conducted until now. There are plenty of areas that cannot reach an agreement among forest owners for implementing forest treatment and enhancing forest roads. In plantation forests, the age class distribution is biased to the elder classes and a few younger classes. Forest stocks are reaching a mature stage, but there are few areas available for businesses with enough profitability. Also, there is not enough man power to implement forest treatment or accessible forest to commercially attract people in a region.

To solve these problems, separation of ownership and management, sufficient matching of forest resource databases with forest user databases or market information, construction of supply chain, introducing precise forestry, standardization of forest information, and cloud services are now under discussion. Communication with forest owners and introducing efficient zoning systems are proposed under the concept of e-forest, cyber-forest, and digital-forest. Establishing a resilience of forest and forestry realizes rich forests and creates new employment opportunities in rural regions by using commercial forests effectively. Possibility of good forest management is also considered under decreasing population in a region, and especially practices and trials in Mie Prefecture will be discussed.

In recent years, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), which have been internationally developed and utilized in many fields, has also attracted people’s attention in the forestry service. Using UAV systems as a data acquisition instrument and a monitoring tool, it can be expected to solve some issues in conventional forest resource inventories and enabling more efficient research. This study was conducted using structure from motion (SfM), which is a photogrammetric range imaging technique. This is accomplished using aerial photography with a UAV in the University forest and consists of: 1) generation of a 3D model of photographed objects, 2) estimation of tree height and DBH, 3) evaluation of the estimation accuracy, and 4) comparisons to measurement errors between two aerial photography sets. The result showed that root mean squared error (RMSE) in the estimated tree height was 1.58 m and RMSE in the estimated DBH from a relational expression between tree height and DBH was 3.88 cm, and RMSE in the estimated tree height between the first and second photography was 0.21 m.

The harvesting of timber with a view to the sustainable use of timber resources is called yield regulation. One problem with using this simple indicator is the lack of information it provides for forest management. The first half of this paper will trace how indicators have shifted with time. As a result of looking back on the past, it was confirmed that a simple index was effective for preventing overcutting. The second half of this paper will outline the revolutionary changes introduced by LiDAR. The main findings were as follows. Firstly, because LiDAR has made it possible to measure tree heights, the fundamental data used in forest management will switch from diameter of breast height to tree height in the near future. Secondly, because population data of both trees and ground surface can be obtained through the analysis of LiDAR data, the base unit of forest management will switch from forest stand in nature to forest land artificially separated by squares like a grid. And lastly, because we can obtain both DSM and DTM from LiDAR data, we now have access to precise population data about standing trees and ground surface. This opens up new opportunities to help forest managers in their work. LiDAR has not only brought about a great technical innovation in the field of forest management, but it has also ushered in a major revolution in the philosophy of forest management.

This study aimed to evaluate the effect of climate change on the potential site productivity of sugi (Cryptomeria japonica)-planted forests in Kyushu Island. In this study, potential site productivity was defined as the simulated 10-year average of net primary production by using the carbon balance-based stand growth model. The spatial unit was a 1-km grid, which had the same as resolution as the climate data, and 15-year-old sugi-planted forests were virtually established in each 1-km grid in the Kyushu Island. Maps of site productivity estimated using current and future climatic data were obtained and compared to generate a map of sugi site productivity change. The average difference between the estimated current and future potential site productivity was −2.61, and the potential site productivity in 87% of the land area of Kyushu Island and of sugi-planted forests was estimated to decrease with future climatic changes. The increase of respiration rate with an increase in temperature was the main factor for the decrease in the potential site productivity of sugi-planted forests.

Unchecked development and land occupation tend to occur during disaster recovery efforts, leading to land degradation. To investigate the influence of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami recovery process on land use and land cover (LULC) in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, a time-series of LULC changes was analyzed using Google Earth images from 2004 to 2013. During the first post-disaster recovery period (2004–2009), inland bare land and green spaces changed to built-up land because temporary shelters had been built in safer areas farther from the coast. Conversely, in coastal areas, the change from bare land to built-up land was greater during the second period (2009–2013) than the first period, possibly because evacuees had returned and rebuilt their houses. The increase in patch density in 2009 might have resulted from the evacuation and construction of temporary shelters in the inland area, forming an urban sprawl-like pattern. The Shannon Diversity Index of the inland area was smaller than that of the coastal area in all monitored years, although it decreased over time in both areas; this indicated that the coastal area was more homogeneous than the inland area, but the homogeneity increased over time in both areas. We observed LULC changes not only in the area affected directly by the tsunami, but also in the evacuation area. Although recovery efforts typically focus on LULC changes in areas directly affected by disasters, they should also consider evacuation areas.

The expanded planting of artificial forests has been facilitated in forests in Japan in response to the requests from Japanese people, who were in need of wood materials during the period of the economic growth, and for public use of the forests. However, even though Japan currently has a larger volume of artificial forests than ever before, the forests are not utilized due to a contradictory heavy dependence on imported wood.

In order to pass the forests and their public functions down to the following generations and to realize “sustainable development,” there is a need for human resources which can look for the root of problems with multidimensional perspectives and can innovate regional societies.

The purpose of the study is to focus on the competency growth of students participating in forest volunteer activities as a possible means for such human resource development and to consider the educational effectiveness, by measuring their development. For that purpose, we measured the growth of students’ competencies through volunteer forest activities, by the Fundamental Competencies for Working Persons (FCWP), based on the data of 20 students who participated in forest volunteer activities in Niimi City, Okayama Prefecture. The growth rate of students’ competencies through forest volunteer activities was characteristically seen in their Ability to control stress, Creativity, Ability to influence, and Ability to grasp situations, which was judged by self-evaluation sheets before and after a 2-week activity.

Principal components are analyzed to verify the factors for the above results and the factors of achievement and activity contents for the forest volunteer has positively influenced competency growth.

An ecological site quality model was developed to aid in predicting the suitability of new locations for growing tree species. This model uses environmental variables to evaluate potential productivity. Data was input into a geographic information system, including 3rd Forest Resources and Land Use Inventory of Taiwan by integrated data from the climate data of the Central Weather Bureau of Taiwan, the Taiwan Forest Bureau, the Council of Agriculture in Taiwan, and the United States Naval Observatory to model the distributions of elevation, slope, aspect, solar radiation, rainfall, evapotranspiration, temperature, and soil nitrogen within Taiwan. Ecological requirements of Chamaecyparis formosensis were derived from the literature and from 211 ground survey plots. Using 22,501,993 40 m × 40 m grids within Taiwan, we modeled the requirements of C. formosensis for solar radiation, temperature, evapotranspiration, soil moisture, and soil nitrogen. We tested the model by comparing predicted sites to its known distribution of C. formosensis in Taiwan. All of the known locations of C. formosensis fell within the area predicted by the model and about 63.91% of the ecological site quality (ESQ) values were above 0.6. It showed that the model is good for evaluating the site quality for the tree species.