Relationship Between Agehama-style Salt Making and Noto’s Satoyamaand Satoumi: From a Viewpoint of Landscape Ecology
1, Tatsuya NOGAMI2●KojiITO
揚げ浜式製塩と能登の里山里海～景観生態学の観点から
1: Noto Satoyama Satoumi Research Program, Kanazawa University
2: Ishikawa Prefectural Government

伊藤浩二（金沢大学能登里山里海研究部門）、野上達也（石川県生活環境部自然保護課）

1 揚げ浜式製塩法とは?

2 揚げ浜式製塩法と里山里海

Whats’s Agehama style salt production?

Agehama style salt production using Satoyama & Satoumi

This is a traditional regional livelihood which is being conducted in salt farms
on the coast of Noto Peninsula, Japan, and has continued for at least 400years. It is one of the main components of “Noto’s Satoyama and Satoumi”,
Globally Important Agricultural Heritage System (GIAHS), that is unique toNoto peninsula requiring ecological services of both satoyama and satoumi.

Nutshell ・Large amount of firewood obtained from satoyama forest isindispensable for the traditional salt making method.
・But now most companies are making salt by using woody
construction waste instead of satoyama firewood.

Sea (Satoumi)
Satoyama (taking firewood)① It begins by spreading seawater on the sand ofsalt farms. After letting the moisture of theseawater to evaporate by the heat of the sun, thesand is gathered and put into a box-like container(tarefune).
② By pouring seawater into the container fromabove, saltwater with salt concentration higher
than seawater (kansui) is obtained.

BarnyardSatoumi (taking sea water)

Production process(Salt pot)

③ The obtained kansui is poured into an iron pan
with a diameter of two meters, and by using twigs
and firewood, the pan is heated for a whole dayand night to precipitate salt crystals.

Salt farmResearch question(Fig.1) Salt farm landscape at Ookawa-hama Beach, Wajima city, Ishikawa
pref. in c. 1950 (Picture cited from Iwanami photo book series ”Noto”)

3 過去の里山林の景観分析

3-3. Landuse change analysis using GIS

Analysis of past satoyama forest landscape3-1. Old document on forest landuse inventory
According to the study of Saito (1954), 71% of forests in Uedo villageof Suzu City were coppice forests, 57% of which were young forests
in 1919. That is, about 40% of the total is presumed to be a youngforest for Agehama style salt making.

3-2. Past landuse analysis using LUIS (landuse database)
Source of twigs and firewood

Forest (Satoyama)

What types of forest were used tocollect twigs and firewood for the salt
production?

Consuming site of the fuels

It was revealed that forest landscape of Noto Peninsula
has been mainly composed of a mixed forests (oak andred-pine trees) from the late Edo period (around 1850)
to the present. In recent
years, vegetation succession
has progressed, and it
continues to change from(Right, Fig.6) Change of Forest
Landscape in Noto peninsula
mixed forest to broadleaf(1850-1985) analyzed by Landforest (red meshes).
Use Information System (LUIS)*.

Nutshell・In around 1900 when salt production was the most popularin Noto, surrounding forests near salt farm were managed as
young forests due to the source of twigs and firewood.
Fig.3 Landuse map of shrub
land (c.1900). 荒地
Green meshes of 2km
represents existence of shrubland. Red meshes represents
that shrub land was adominant landuse in the mesh.

Fig.4 Landuse map of mixedforest (oak and red-pine trees)(c.1900). 混交林
Green meshes of 2km represents
existence of the type of forest.
Red meshes represents that thetype was a dominant landuse in
the mesh.

Fig.5 Landuse map ofsalt farm (c.1900).
塩田
Green meshes of
2km represents salt
farms appearance.

After the war, theAgehama-style salt
farm decreased to 1,
but recently it has been
gradually recovering as
consumer demand fornatural salt hasdeveloped.
(Fig.9) Twigs on firewood using(Fig.8) The current location of
Agehama style salt-farms. There
are 7 companies in Noto
peninsula.

for traditional salt making in
Noto salt farm village (Suzu city,
Ishikawa Pref.)Change to Broadleaf forest

・Since the early Showa era (around 1930), when Noto‘s salt
production industry declined, application of biomass fromforests shifted from salt production to charcoal production.
Furthermore, the charcoal production has also declined
since the 1960s and the use of biomass from forests has
declined markedly up until today.

Coniferous forest(No change)

Change to Coniferous forest
Mixed forest (No change)
Change to Mixed forest* Land Use Information System (LUIS)
http://db.cger.nies.go.jp/dataset/luis/ja/index.html

4 現在の塩田と希少植物保全との関係
Plant conservation with Agehama-style salt production

Broadleaf forest (No change)

Let’s make it a symbol ofsatoyama conservation
along with salt productionindustry!

Recently, the efforts
to use twigs fromsatoyama forest andthinned wood from
artificial conifer
forests as fuel arereviving in theagehama style salt
making, and it isdrawing attention asa good practice of
GIAHS.

Reduced use of satoyama forest has also
caused a problem in conservation of rarewild plants. As an example, we haveconducted conservation research for a
perennial plant which is designated as aprefectural endangered species, Lilium
medeoloides var. sadoinsulae (Fig.4).

This species is growing in a forest thatwas once shrub land and mixed-forest
near the coast of the northern Noto
Peninsula, and a deep involvement with(Fig.10) Flower of Lilium
medeoloides var. sadoinsulae. the salt production is inferred.
This species habits on steep
slope of deciduous forest
floor, and on big bare rockin Northern part of Noto
peninsula.

AcKnowledgements
The landuse data is provided from LUIS Web in the Global Environmental
Database, Center for Global Environmental Research, National Institute forEnvironmental Studies, Japan. The land use information data in this study wascreated by Yukio Himiyama, Hokkaido University of Education, and Shouichirou
Arizono, Aichi University.