Characteristics of Spatial Distribution of Plant Communities at the High Moor in Kushiro Wetland Using Aerial Color Photographs of Super High Spatial Resolution

The ecosystem of wetlands has precious natural environment to be preserved in the world. In order to sustain valuable wetlands ecosystems for a long time, it is very important to frequently monitor the state of wetland ecosystems, to carefully watch the environment, and to earlier warn the environmental change. In this research, using high spatial resolution of color photographs taken with a 35 mm non-metric camera mounted on the cabled balloon flown over the high moor near Akanuma in Kushiro wetland, characteristics of spatial distribution of wetland plant communities are studied in terms of application and interpretation of remote sensing data for wetland environment monitoring using geostatistics, texture analysis, and landscape metrics. Outcomes of this research are summarized as follows. 1. An ultra fine and reliable vegetation map, of which nominal spatial resolution is 2cm by 2cm, with 40 plant community types at the time of the summer in 1998 was originally created, which is covering about 15ha of the high moor, for the baseline map for ecological studies near Akanuma. 2. The optimal spatial resolution for monitoring vegetation in this area by remote sensing is smaller than a half meter. 3. Concentric spatial distribution of typical wetland plant community groups is clearly distinguished and confirmed in the ultra fine vegetation map through visual interpretation and spatial analysis using GIS application tools. 4. Results of this research show that remote sensing of high spatial resolution greatly serves for wetland environment monitoring and wetland studies.