Three Decades of Land Use and Land Cover Change in Japan

 Three Decades of Land Use and Land Cover Change in Japan (1994–2024): A Systematic Literature Review of Trajectories, Drivers, and Sustainability Implications

Abstract:

Land use and land cover change (LULCC) constitutes a major challenge to sustainability worldwide. This also applies to Japan, where urbanization in coastal lowlands is contrasted with widespread agricultural abandonment in rural landscapes. In this systematic review we synthesized the main LULCC trajectories, their driving forces, and specific effects in Japan from 1994 to 2024. Following PRISMA guidelines, 158 peer-reviewed articles were analyzed using quantitative co-occurrence analyses, Chi-squared tests, and Sankey diagrams to map land-use flows. Two dominant and opposing trajectories were confirmed: urban expansion and agricultural abandonment. The most significant land transition flow involved the conversion of agricultural land to forests/natural vegetation, while the conversion of agricultural land to built-up areas came in second place. These transitions were primarily driven by economic and demographic factors, but reforestation trends were strongly influenced by policy and institutional factors (35.70%), reflecting national regreening initiatives. Ecological and biodiversity impacts of LULCC were the most often documented effects (>40% of records). While the published literature describes trends in land-use transformations, the mechanistic understanding of LULCC remains limited. There is an urgent need to move toward process-based predictive modeling that integrates socio-economic variables. Future policies should balance urban density management with the strategic use of rural abandonment for ecosystem services provision and climate mitigation.

Keywords: demographic change; land policies; urbanization; agricultural abandonment; Satoyama; ecosystem services

Maintaining & restoring traditional rural landscapes / Re-nou-vation Project Tsukamotogo Saitama

 Re農vation プロジェクト　さいたま　塚本郷

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Oriental Reed Warbler at Tsukamotogo

 

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オオヨシキリ　＠塚本郷

 

Utilitarian diversity and options for the sustainable use of the bush banana Uvaria chamae P. Beauv. in Benin (West Africa

 

Read here: https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1186/s13002-024-00741-5.pdf

Abstract

Background The bush banana (Uvaria chamae P. Beauv.) is a wild edible fruit, but its population has declined recently in Benin. This study assessed the traditional knowledge and use of U. chamae, along with the key factors relevant to itsconservation and sustainable management. The study reports (i) traditional knowledge and effective use of the species by local communities in relation to socioeconomic factors, (ii) local perceptions of threats to U. chamae, and (iii) conservation strategies suggested by local communities to ensure its sustainable use and management in Benin.

Keywords: Traditional medicine, Wild edible fruits, Domestication, Forest resources, Local perception

Environmental Science Seminar with Prof. emer. Roland Brandl

 

 Environmental Science Seminar

Functional traits mediate the response of animal communities to environmental challenges

 Prof. emer. Roland Brandl

 Animal Ecology, Phillips-University Marburg, Hesse, Germany

Location: Chuo University, Faculty of Science and Engineering, Building 2, Room 2901

セミナー中の使用言語は英語になりますが、日本語での質問も可能ですので、英語が苦手な方も気軽にご参加ください。

The biosphere shows distinct spatial patterns linked to environmental factors. In the case of plants, these patterns become visible e.g. as forests or grasslands. Plant communities with similar morphological appearance can be taxonomically very different, and botanists have developed concepts such as plant life-forms to obtain generally applicable tools for analysing such different groups. In zoology, the use of functional traits to predict the response of species to environmental factors also has a long history (e.g. ecogeographic rules), and the use of traits to predict community processes has recently developed into a hot topic in the face of global change. 

Body size is often utilized as a key trait that influences community composition across spatial and temporal scales in both ecto- and endothermic organisms: In endotherms, mean body size of communities decreases with increasing environmental temperature. In ectotherms, the direction of the response is less clear. Some taxonomic groups show a positive response (e.g. dragonflies), others a negative response (e.g. spiders). Body size is also used to standardize other traits correlated with body size (e.g. brain size). Recently, colour lightness has been recognized as a trait that influences the response of ectotherms to climatic characteristics: dark-coloured species dominate communities of high latitudes. This leads to the prediction that climate warming should allow light-coloured species to expand their northern range limits while the southern range limits of dark-coloured species may move northwards.  An explicit test of this prediction remains to be carried out, but discussions of potential consequences of such shifts for agriculture, forestry and ecosystem management should be started now.

Modeling current and future distribution patterns of Uvaria chamae in Benin (West Africa): Challenges and opportunities for its sustainable management

 Read here: https://www.cell.com/heliyon/pdf/S2405-8440(23)00865-4.pdf

Fieldwork at Sarobetsu Mire in Northern Hokkaido

 

Using a small drone to capture patterns in the vegetation.

Paper on the relationship between ecosystem services and the abandonment of agricultural land in Japan is out 🙂 -> https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/10/10/1031

Hotspots of Agricultural Ecosystem Services and Farmland Biodiversity Overlap with Areas at Risk of Land Abandonment in Japan

Read here: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/10/10/1031

Abstract

Agriculture provides a wide range of ecosystem services and has the potential to contribute to biodiversity conservation. In Japan, many of the resources associated with agroecosystems are threatened by farmland abandonment. Identifying where and to what extent agricultural ecosystem services and farmland biodiversity are affected by farmland abandonment is essential for developing effective strategies to counter the potential loss of these services and the biological communities that support them. Our study aimed to examine how a set of indicators for ecosystem services and biodiversity linked to agroecosystems (proportions of land dedicated to rice production and other agricultural production, proportion of agricultural land on slopes potentially providing landscape aesthetics, proportion of villages promoting rural tourism, and densities of forest edges and irrigation ponds in agricultural land) are distributed at the municipal level across the Japanese Archipelago, and to analyze their spatial patterns in relation to the distribution of farmland abandonment. It was hypothesized that hotspots of agricultural ecosystem services and farmland biodiversity occur in areas at risk of farmland abandonment owing to shared drivers. The cluster analysis identified four distinct ecosystem service bundle types, two of them representing areas specializing in agricultural production, while the other two provided high levels of cultural services and habitats for diverse biological communities. The latter two bundles were located in hilly and mountainous areas and accounted for 58% of rice production, 27% of other agricultural production, 77% of landscape aesthetics, 77% of rural tourism, 64% of forest edges, and 87% of irrigation ponds in Japan. In support of the hypothesis, farmland abandonment was pronounced in these areas, with 64% of recently abandoned fields located where 44% of agricultural land was found. This spatial overlap suggests that substantial losses of ecosystem services and biodiversity may occur if current patterns of farmland abandonment continue. In order to prevent large-scale losses of agricultural ecosystem services and farmland biodiversity, measures to counteract the ongoing abandonment trends should prioritize hilly and mountainous areas, and future studies should further evaluate the multiple functions of agricultural areas to improve policies that aim to ensure sustainable development of rural areas in Japan

The contribution of insects to global forest deadwood decomposition

 

Read here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03740-8

Abstract:

The amount of carbon stored in deadwood is equivalent to about 8 per cent of the global forest carbon stocks. The decomposition of deadwood is largely governed by climate with decomposer groups—such as microorganisms and insects—contributing to variations in the decomposition rates. At the global scale, the contribution of insects to the decomposition of deadwood and carbon release remains poorly understood. Here we present a field experiment of wood decomposition across 55 forest sites and 6 continents. We find that the deadwood decomposition rates increase with temperature, and the strongest temperature effect is found at high precipitation levels. Precipitation affects the decomposition rates negatively at low temperatures and positively at high temperatures. As a net effect—including the direct consumption by insects and indirect effects through interactions with microorganisms—insects accelerate the decomposition in tropical forests (3.9% median mass loss per year). In temperate and boreal forests, we find weak positive and negative effects with a median mass loss of 0.9 per cent and −0.1 per cent per year, respectively. Furthermore, we apply the experimentally derived decomposition function to a global map of deadwood carbon synthesized from empirical and remote-sensing data, obtaining an estimate of 10.9 ± 3.2 petagram of carbon per year released from deadwood globally, with 93 per cent originating from tropical forests. Globally, the net effect of insects may account for 29 per cent of the carbon flux from deadwood, which suggests a functional importance of insects in the decomposition of deadwood and the carbon cycle.

 The graduation ceremony for the class of 2020 was held today at the Korakuen Campus of Chuo University. Congratulations everybody!

 (don't worry - we put the masks back on immediately after taking the photo)