Recently, it has become widely recognized that, besides timber production, forests play an important role in maintaining and enhancing the quality of the environment. This is particularly true in urbanized and suburbanized area where greenery has rapidly diminished. Proposed in this paper is a new notion and method of evaluating such functions of forests. The functions fall into four major categories, such as 1) creating a superior landscape, 2) providing recreational places, 3) preserving historical sites and traditional events, 4) stabilizing ecological condition and mitigating environmental impacts.
The proposed method of evaluating the above functions consists of the following five steps.
1) Organize the structure of functions that forests and forest lands upgrade or fulfill amenity.
2) Select sample areas and collect data connecting with the forests and surrounding area.
3) Design and conduct questionnaire survey.
4) Analyze the results of residents' respondents.
5) Formulate indices by means of multiple regression analysis.
According to the above procedure, the questionnaire survey was carried out in Kanagawa prefecture as a typical test area where the urbanization advances extensively into surrounding forest zone. The sample size was 12, 000 (75sample for 160points each), and answers actually employed was 27.5% (3433 sheets).
The proposed index system is formulated based on the result of the questionnaire. This was done through correlating the “subjective” evaluation on the forests by the residents with the “objective” parameters on demographic, geographic, and ecological condition by means of the multiple regression analysis.
Prior to the analysis, the differences in the respondents among the studied areas were investigated. From this results, it was found that the whole area would be divided into three sub areas with respects to the level of urbanization.
The developed index system, which emphasizes the value of forests from the aspects of environmental conservation, will be an effective tool in planning and managing forests, particularly those which are to be endangered by urbanization.
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