This study attempts to develop a classification to divide the suburb forest according to their services or function. Here suburb forests refer to which locate outside or close to urban intensive developed area within a city administration boundary. In Taiwan, we find most of suburb forests on the mountains or hills which surround on the urban fringe, thus these forest, to some extent, protect the downstream urban area from natural disasters, maintain water resource and conserve the habitats for wide lives. Besides, citizens hold recreation activities in this area to relax and get spirit comfort.
Suburb forest was not paid much attention and when the developed area expands, these forests together with nearby agricultural zone was changed or fragmented to residential or other usage, causing them compressed or eliminated. I think if a suburb forest classification is created and mapped out, this might be help to understand how they spread out on the urban landscape and how they should when it comes to urban planning.
The classification was constructed in accordance with tree main function- disaster protection, habitat conservation and recreation activity. I use the available disaster protection forest designation criteria, urban zoning, spatial relation and landscape ecological principal to formulate the category and with the latest Taipei city zoning map, aerial orthoimages and other auxiliary information to find out how they distribute in the Taipei’s landscape.
