Assessment of wood provisioning in protected subtropical forest areas for sustainable management beyond the zone.

Among the ecosystem services that humans use from forest ecosystems, wood resources are one of the basic services that are essential to human life. Since the use of wood resources disturbs ecosystems, overharvesting destroys local ecosystems, resulting in a decline in ecosystem services. Therefore, there is a need to balance the use of wood resources by people with the health of the ecosystem. In this study, we evaluated wood provisioning in newly established national parks in Okinawa Main Island, Japan, for future sustainable management. We clarified the spatial distribution between the forest stand volume obtained from LiDAR data, the logging sites before the national park designation, and national park zoning. We found that the buffer zone contains some forests with high stand volume that continue from the core area. There had not been much logging in recent years, but most logging sites were located in the buffer zone and within 200m from roads. Forests with aged stands and high stand volume are important as buffers to prevent isolation of the core area. Therefore, park managers need to consider not only the legal regulations for each zone but also the continuity with the surrounding natural environment to prevent isolation of the core area. Understanding the spatial distribution of wood resources and park zoning relationships at a fine-scale resolution will be useful for managing buffer zones where there is competition between conservation and resource use.