The green tract in city region is crucial for furthering urban ecology especially since vegetation impacts temperature and solves climatic issues in urban areas. However, what is the optimal amount of vegetation and how best is it laid out ? Up to now, the enhancement of a city function has been advanced to accumulate the population and productivity more.
Simultaneously, the optimization of vegetation arrangement in an overcrowded city is requested from the viewpoint of urban environmental planning. The author has been researching characteristics of the vegetation distribution to fulfill these contradictory requirements. High resolution satellite data are seen to possess new potential in this regard.This study uses the high resolution satellite Quickbird, IKONOS and the other middle resolution satellites to investigate Tokyo citys vegetation distribution. Extracting vegetation cover in target area, its ratio and a few characteristics of distribution pattern were investigated as a result. The ratio of vegetation cover was 23.1 % in a square area measuring 15km
×15km set in center of Tokyo. Additionally, the difference of the ratio of vegetation cover by the mesh area divided into a square area measuring 3km×3km was investigated. A very lowratio(10-15%jwas shown in two or more mesh areas in the eastern parts of Tokyo. Consequently, an intermediate ratio
(20-30%) was shown in the mesh area in some western parts. The highest ratio (30% over) was occupied in the large Wildlife Park in the center of Tokyo. Moreover, a regular arrangement of vegetation was extracted in the center of Tokyo though an irregular distribution of many dotted small-scale vegetation was detected in the surrounding areas by satellite image analysis.@The propriety of vegetation arrangement in overcrowded city and the improvement in the future were considered from both sides of the distribution characteristics and the ratio of vegetation.
