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
