Abstract
Sacred forests, found on all inhabited continents, are globally recognized for their biodiversity and conservation value and their role in cultural landscapes. Assessments of the effects of forest sacredness have mostly focused on small regions and are based on diverse methods. We used geographic information provided by the public and datasets derived from remote sensing to locate and examine changes in shrine and temple forests across Japan. We compared the aboveground vegetation structure and annual rate of forest loss of these sacred forests with their surrounding nonsacred forests and with legally protected areas. We tested whether these differences were comparable between urban and rural areas and between shrine and temple forests. Based on a sample of 35,899 sacred forests, sacred forests had higher canopy height (mean [SD] = 15.5 m [0.02] vs. 15.2 m [0.01], t test, p