An examination of land use controls in the Lake Biwa watershed from the perspective of environmental conservation and management

Abstract In the outskirts of metropolitan areas of Japan, there is an increasing tendency for residential and commercial facilities to be located in close proximity to transportation networks, particularly around railway stations. The resulting sprawl, involving residential development and industrial estates, perpetuates land use distortions in the semi‐urban areas, as well as in agricultural and forestry lands. Lake Biwa, the largest lake in Japan, provides water to a population of 14 million people in Shiga, Osaka, Kyoto and Hyogo Prefectures. The Lake Biwa watershed has undergone dramatic land use transformations resulting from the migration of the downstream population and industries attracted by the provision of necessary, basic infrastructure via the Lake Biwa Comprehensive Development Plan (1972–1997). The purposes of this study are to provide a quantitative analysis of land use transformations within the Lake Biwa watershed, with particular reference to urbanization, examine watershed land use controls by analysis of deviation of actual land uses from the land use control targets, assess the flaws in the present land use controls and to discuss the implications of the results within the context of the Lake Biwa Comprehensive Conservation Plan (1999–), using a geographic information system to illustrate the results. The major findings of this study are that the continued existence of farmland and forests, in conjunction with urban sprawl, in the Urbanization Promotion Areas and the Use Districts, has resulted in serious land use problems which are seriously aggravated in the south‐eastern and north‐eastern parts of the watershed, and the expansion of urban areas in the Urbanization Control Areas and the White Areas has resulted in land use control becoming more problematic, especially in the eastern part of the watershed.