THE CRANES’ NESTING ANALYSIS USING GIS 
- LANDSCAPE ECOLOGICAL APPLICATIONS - 
Koichi HIRATA 
PASCO Corporation, Japan 
hirata@mxa. me sh. ne. j p 
and 
Hiroshi MURAKAMI 
Geographical Survey Institute, Japan 
hiromura@gsi-mc.go.jp 
KEYWORDS: Landscape ecology, Cranes, LANDSAT, GIS, Spatial analysis, Temporal analysis. 
ABSTRACT 
The environment that surrounds human beings is composed of various factors. The concept of Landscape Ecology is to 
harmonize the developments by human beings and the maintenance of the natural environment. Geographic Information System 
(GIS) was used to assess an inhabitable environment of the Crane in Hokkaido, on spatial and temporal scale. Two sites, Furen 
Lake and Kushiro Wetland, were considered in the present study. The studies on landscape ecology utilizing GIS for conserving 
the natural environment should be developed on the national level. GIS applications have high potentials for such kinds of 
wildlife habitat studies. 
1. INTRODUCTION 
The living environment of human beings consists of several 
elements. A balance between the conservation of natural 
environment and various developments are of prime 
importance for the Landscape Ecology. The concept of 
landscape ecology has been introduced recently in Japan and 
the impact of human’s activity on the environment, its 
management and assessment, are greatly realized by 
environmentalists and has to be expanded at large spatial level. 
The ideas of landscape ecology considers different conditions, 
land use planning, environmental planning, landscape 
planning etc., and possesses vital attention. The concepts of 
the landscape ecology mainly included spatial and temporal 
scales and depending on these two scales the landscape is 
generated based on patch, corridor and matrix. 
In this paper the habitats of red cranes (Grus japonesis), 
protected as rare species and natural monuments, and their 
habitat environment were considered for the landscape 
ecology based analysis. The conservation planning utilized 
the results of the analysis. 
2. OBJECTS AND UTILIZED DATA 
The Environmental Agency provided the data on the cranes’ 
nesting distribution. The maps were digitized for the nesting 
sites and the information on surrounding patches, corridors 
and barriers were extracted while selecting the cranes’ nesting 
site. The natural environment, landscape ecology, people’s 
activity and developments were considered. The relationship 
of the artificial structure, the development regulations on 
National Park and related data were analyzed. The remote 
sensing and GIS are useful the landscape ecology and its wide 
area coverage (Stow, 1993). The authors followed the rule- 
based GIS for the cranes’ habitat analysis as spatial analysis 
and nesting sites were identified as final results (Hirata et al., 
1995). The study included the following GIS functions for 
the analysis of the natural environment: 
( 1 ) Data conversion function 
(2) Operators function 
(3) Buffer function 
(4) Overlay function 
(5) Database management function 
Pl-3-1