Monitoring biodiversity and ecosystems is an essential matter for the conservation and management of natural resources. The Ministry of Environment of Japan has conducted to make and provide vegetation maps for entire Japan. The maps of 1/200,000 were produced in 1973 as the first stage, and works of 1/50,000 mapping from 1978 to 1987 followed it as the second stage. From 1999 the third stage has started and 1/25,000 maps have being produced, and over 15,000 vegetation samples have already stored.

Although vegetation maps and vegetation data have some problems, those become useful to monitor ecosystems if some models are installed. Examples are as follows.

1) Using 1/50,000 maps, model-based map showing potential distribution of bamboo woodland can be produced. The map can support to estimate a risk of bamboo woodland expansion, which is the serious problem in Satoyama.

2) Using vegetation samples, potentially occurring region can be estimated for every vegetation type as well as every species.

3) Using species composition data in vegetation samples, accuracy of identification/classification of vegetation can be tested statically; e.g. the huge data of species composition allow us to calculate fidelity for all identified vegetation types.