The Transition of Land Use in Rural Area in the 1950s and Later in Shitaru, Tsushima City, Nagasaki Prefecture

Abstract

At present, Tsushima faces serious underpopulation problems. Accordingly, vast farm lands, forests, and mountains were abandoned, and land cover changed due to changing life-styles. This study aims to clarify the changes of land use in rural area by using aerial photographs in 1955, 1977, 2016 and interviewing local people in Shitaru, Tsushima. Land use was classified into 9 types: dry fields, paddy fields, planted forests, secondary forests, main village areas, other used areas, water areas, bare areas and abandoned areas. The local people used 12.3% of the mountain areas for food in 1955, but they had hardly used the areas expect for logging broad-leaved trees for shiitake mushrooms in 2016. We found the cultivated area consist of dry fields and paddy fields had decreased from 91.3ha to 16.3ha between 1955 and 2016. Most of the local people have used the cultivated area for personal consumption, and it assumed that there were two reasons: the first was that there was others source of income such as reef resources and shiitake mushrooms, and the second was difficulty in shopping. It was expected to change the vegetation due to decreasing utilizing area, and it is necessary to investigate the impact on wildlife habitats.