Since the 1960s, Japan has become highly dependent on foreign countries for natural resources, and the amount of managed lands (e.g. coppice, grassland, and agricultural field) has declined. Due to infrequent natural and human disturbance, early-successional species are now declining in Japan. Here we surveyed bees, birds, and plants in four human-disturbed open habitats (pasture, meadow, young planted forest, and abandoned clear-cut) and two forest habitats (mature planted forest and natural old-growth). We extended a recently developed multispecies abundance model to accommodate count data, and used the resulting models to estimate species-, functional group-, and community-level state variables (abundance and species richness) at each site, and compared them among the six habitats. Estimated individual-level detection probability was quite low for bee Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (species (mean across species = 0.003; 0.16 for birds). Thirty-two (95% credible interval: 13-64) and one (0-4) bee and bird species, respectively, were suggested to be undetected by the field survey. Although habitats in which community-level abundance and species richness was highest differed among taxa, species richness and abundance of early-successional species were similar in the four disturbed open habitats across taxa except for plants in the pasture habitat which was a good habitat only for several exotic species. Our results suggest that human disturbance, especially the revival of plantation forestry, may contribute to the restoration of early-successional species in Japan.

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This study examines a method for producing a "Community Environmental Map" through public participation by using a Community Environmental Mapping Support System (CEMSS; user-friendly GIS). The authors developed a CEMSS and, as a case study, hosted a Community Environmental Mapping (CEM) Project employing the CEMSS. They describe the CEMSS and CEM project within the context of the following points: (1) Effectiveness of the CEM. (2) Effectiveness of the CEMSS in CEM. (3) Future challenges for improving the CEMSS. The findings revealed that participants were able to produce accurate maps using the CEMSS and that they were able to increase their knowledge of environmental design through CEM. For these reasons, the CEM Project was considered effective for community-scale spatial planning. Results from a questionnaire survey showed that CEMSS appears to be relatively easy for non-expert users of GIS to adopt, but that sufficient scope exists for improving the CEMSS. The potential for using CEMSS on a PDA with GPS in the field was considered particularly important as several participants found that they were unable to find their location on paper maps in areas with no obvious landmarks.

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