Urban and spatial planning

Satoyama refers to the mosaic of forests, paddies, grasslands, and village settlements that emerged in Japan through centuries of small-scale, subsistence-oriented land use, and researchers study how these landscapes sustain unusually high levels of biodiversity while simultaneously encoding cultural and agricultural knowledge. Because Satoyama habitats depend on active, low-intensity human management — periodic coppicing, controlled burning, seasonal flooding of rice fields — their ecological value tends to decline when rural communities abandon traditional practices or when urban expansion fragments the surrounding land. Conservation science in this area therefore works at the intersection of ecology, land-use history, and social organization, asking how community participation can be structured to maintain management continuity and what governance models allow Satoyama principles to translate to urban-fringe and peri-urban contexts. Open questions include how to measure and sustain the full spectrum of ecosystem services these landscapes provide as rural populations age and shrink, and whether culturally specific Satoyama frameworks can inform broader global strategies for managing traditional agricultural landscapes under accelerating land-use change.

Works

103,831

Total citations

62,840

Keywords

Satoyamalandscape conservationtraditional agriculturebiodiversitycommunity participationecosystem management