Title

Long-term data on forest regeneration after catastrophic windthrow in Tomakomai, Hokkaido, northern Japan

Authors

Hiroki Itô^*1, Takeshi Seki¹, Ikutaro Tsuyama¹, Shigeo Iida²

• 1 Hokkaido Research Center, Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute, Sapporo, 062-8516, Japan
• 2 Kyushu Research Center, Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute, Kumamoto 860-0862, Japan

* Corresponding author: abies.firma@gmail.com
Phone: +81 11 590 5523
Fax: +81 11 851 4167

Abstract

Typhoon No. 15 in 1954 (Marie) caused catastrophic windthrow in Hokkaido, northern Japan. The Tomakomai District of the National Forest was one of the forests severely damaged. A study site was established in a stand of the National Forest within the jurisdiction of the Iburi East District Forest Office. The stand was located on the eastern slope of Mt. Tarumae at an elevation of approximately 300–310 m a.s.l. at an angle of approximately 5°. Two belts sized 4 m × 40 m, crossing at right angles at the center, were established within the site in 1957, and censuses on regeneration were conducted in 1957, 1970, 1973, 1978, 1983, 1990, 1996, 2001, 2006, 2011, and 2016. All stems of coniferous tree species (height ≥ 10 cm) that regenerated in the belts were marked. For broadleaved tree species, all stems with height ≥ 1.3 m were marked in 1957–1990, but stems with height ≥ 10 cm were marked after 1996. Height was measured for all marked stems, and the diameter at breast height was measured for stems with height ≥ 1.3 m. During the censuses, 27 coniferous and broadleaved tree species were identified and three more species were identified to the genus level. There are 2,152 records for the occurrence data and 10,660 records for the measurement data, including missing values. The stem occurrence data were compiled following the Darwin Core format, and the measurement data were compiled following the Darwin Core Measurement or Fact Extension format. Finally all data were compiled for the Darwin Core Archive, an international standard format for biodiversity data. These data can help in understanding the succession of forests following large-scale disturbance and in managing this type of forest properly.

Key words

• broadleaved tree
• catastrophic windthrow
• conifer
• growth pattern
• forest regeneration
• mixed forest
• natural disturbance
• succession
• time series
• typhoon

Introduction

Typhoon No. 15 in 1954 (Marie, also known as Tôyamaru Typhoon) attacked Hokkaido Island, northern Japan, on September 26 and caused catastrophic windthrow (The scientific investigation group of the wind-damaged forests in Hokkaido 1959; Tamate et al. 1977). As a result, the regeneration of forests from wind damage became an important issue. A number of studies have addressed this topic (Sato et al. 1985; Osawa 1992; Toyooka et al. 1992; Ishizuka et al. 1998; Tanouchi et al. 2003; Hokkaido Regional Forest Office 2015; Kosugi et al. 2016).

The Tomakomai District of the National Forest was one of the areas severely damaged by the typhoon (The scientific investigation group of the wind-damaged forests in Hokkaido 1959; Tamate et al. 1977). In the Tomakomai working unit in the district, 7,459 ha of the total forest area (16,123 ha) was damaged, and the damage in 39 of 401 forest compartments (1,436 ha) was very severe (over 80% of each compartment was destroyed). In the working unit, 44.6% of the tree volume was lost (The scientific investigation group of the wind-damaged forests in Hokkaido 1959). Before the storm, the area was covered with an old-growth forest composed of coniferous tree species, Picea glehnii (F.Schmidt) Mast., Picea jezoensis (Siebold et Zucc.) Carrière and Abies sachalinensis (F.Schmidt) Mast., as well as broadleaved trees such as Quercus crispula Blume, Betula ermanii Cham., and Sorbus commixta Hedl. (Osawa 1992). In this district, a study site was established in 1957 to monitor forest regeneration, and subsequent censuses were irregularly conducted until 2016.

We compiled data on forest regeneration, which consisted of tree species, longitudinal stem height (for stems ≥ 10 cm high) and diameter at breast height (DBH; for stems ≥ 1.3 m high). A portion of these data were used by Sato et al. (1985), Osawa (1992) and Tanouchi et al. (2003). The data can facilitate an understanding of the succession of forests after large-scale disturbance and in management of this type of forest.

Metadata

1. Title

Long-term data on forest regeneration after catastrophic windthrow in Tomakomai, Hokkaido, northern Japan

2. Contributors

A. Dataset owner

Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute
Address: Matsunosato, Tsukuba 305-8687, Japan

B. Contact person

Hiroki Itô
E-mail: abies.firma@gmail.com
Affiliation: Hokkaido Research Center, Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute
Address: Toyohira-ku, Sapporo 062-8516, Japan

C. Principal investigators

Minoru Nakano, Kenjiro Morita, Isao Iimori, Hiroshi Toyooka, Akira Sato, Setsuko Sugawara, Keita Hayashi, Moriyoshi Ishizuka, Akira Osawa, Yoichi Kanazawa, Sadao Ohba, Hiromichi Kushima, Hiroyuki Tanouchi, Shigeo Iida, Shin Abe, Hajime Utsugi, Tetsuya Matsui, Shigeo Kuramoto, Takeshi Seki, Hiroki Itô, Ikutaro Tsuyama, Teruyoshi Nagamitsu, Keiko Kitamura, and Atsushi Nakanishi

3. Geographic coverage

Tomakomai, Hokkaido, Japan
42.690269 N, 141.432472 E

4. Temporal coverage

1957–2016 (1957, 1970, 1973, 1978, 1983, 1990, 1996, 2001, 2006, 2011, and 2016)

5. Taxonomic coverage

There were 27 species identified and three more species identified to the genus level.

6. Sampling methods

A. Study site

The data were collected in a stand of the National Forest of Japan, compartment 1463 (formerly 463) within the jurisdiction of the Iburi East District Forest Office (formerly Tomakomai District Forest Office). The stand was located on the slope of Mt. Tarumae at an elevation of approximately 300–310 m a.s.l. The slope direction was east, and the angle was approximately 5°. The slope was covered with thick tephra, which was produced by volcanic eruptions of Mt. Tarumae, and the organic soil layer was thin (Osawa 1992). The mean temperature from 1981 to 2010 was 7.6 °C and mean precipitation from 1981 to 2010 was 1197.9 mm in Tomakomai City, about 12 km southwest of the stand and at 6 m a.s.l. (http://www.data.jma.go.jp/obd/stats/etrn/view/nml_sfc_ym.php?prec_no=21&block_no=47424, accessed 24 July 2017).

In 1957, three years after the wind damage in 1954, a study site was established in the stand and two belts (4 m × 40 m, each) for the study of regeneration were also established (Sato et al. 1985; Osawa 1992). They crossed at right angles at the center of the bands, so that the total study area was 304 m². It is not clear what the condition of the site was immediately after the windthrow, but inferring from data obtained in 1957, it seems that most overstory trees had fallen. Most of the fallen logs had been brought out as salvage before the establishment of the site, while some broken stems and branches were left on the forest floor (Sato et al. 1985). There were no dwarf bamboo, which cover 89% of the forest floor in Hokkaido (Toyooka et al. 1983) and can suppress regeneration of trees, on the floor of the site before the damage (Tanouchi et al. 2003). Dwarf bamboo remained absent through our latest observation, and a portion of the floor was covered with moss (May 2017; Itô H, unpublished).

B. Sampling description

All stems (height ≥ 10 cm) of coniferous tree species found in the belts were marked and measured in 1957. Stems remaining from before the disturbance were included in the census. Subsequent censuses were conducted in 1970, 1973, 1978, 1983, 1990, 1996, 2001, 2006, 2011 and 2016. Stems from sprouted shoots were included in the census. Height of the marked stems was measured using measuring tape, a measuring pole or a Vertex instrument (Haglöf, Sweden). The precision of the height measurements was from 1 to 10 cm depending on the height. Some of the height measurements in 2016 were delayed until spring in 2017. Due to various reasons such as measurement error, stem leaning, and stem die-back, the values obtained for height could have decreased relative to previous measurements. In addition, some measurements of stem heights were smaller than 10 cm due to errors, a part of which was caused by growth of moss; it lifted ground height and relatively shorten stem heights from the ground. For stems with height ≥ 1.3 m, diameter at breast height (DBH) was measured at a height of 1.3 m using a caliper (for thinner stems, approximate diameter < 2–3 cm) or measuring tape (for the rest of the stems). When measuring tape was used, DBH was calculated by dividing the girth values by π. The precision of the diameter measurements was 0.1 cm.

Stems of deciduous tree species with height ≥ 1.3 m were also marked and their heights were measured in the same manner as coniferous tree species, though some stems < 1.3 m were included in the data. After 1996, all stems of deciduous tree species with height ≥ 10 cm were marked and measured. The measurement values could have decreased relative to previous ones due to measurement errors or shrinkage of stems. DBHs were measured for stems with height ≥ 1.3 m.

There are 2,152 records in the occurrence data and 10,660 records in the measurement data, including missing values. Measurements in 1990 were conducted only in a portion of the belts, so there are many missing values in the data for that year.

9. Data structure

The format of this data set follows Darwin Core Archive format (GBIF 2010), the international standard format for biodiversity data. The archive file “dwca-tomakomai1463-ver1.0.zip” is composed of four files: eml.xml, meta.xml, Tomakomai1463_occ.txt and Tomakomai1463_mea.txt. These files can be extracted by unzipping the archive file.

File name: eml.xml

This is an xml file following the GBIF EML format (https://github.com/gbif/eml-profile, accessed 23 July 2017). This file contains the metadata of this data set.

File name: meta.xml

This is an xml file describing relationships between fields in the data files and the Darwin Core terms. The fields listed below are universal in the data set, and are defined in this file. All of the descriptions are cited from the TDWG website (http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/, accessed 23 July 2017).

File name: Tomakomai1463_occ.txt

This is a tab separated text file containing occurrence data of the data set. The data format follows the Darwin Core. All of the descriptions are cited from the TDWG website (http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/, accessed 23 July 2017).

File name: Tomakomai1463_mea.txt

This is a tab separated file containing measurement data of the data set. The data format follows Darwin Core Measurement or Fact Extension. All of the descriptions except CoreID are from the TDWG website (http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/, accessed 23 July 2017).

10. Accessibility

License

This dataset is provided under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode).

Acknowledgements

We thank Dr. Takeshi Osawa (National Agriculture and Food Research Organization) for advice on the Darwin Core data format, and Prof. Akira Osawa (Kyoto University) for comments on the manuscript. We also thank the Iburi East District Forest Office for permitting the field survey.

Conflict of interest

The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.

References

GBIF (2010) Darwin Core Archive Assistant, version 1.1, released on 1 April 2011, (contributed by Remsen D, Sood R.), Global Biodiversity Information Facility, Copenhagen (https://www.gbif.org/document/80637/darwin-core-archive-assistant-user-guide, accessed 11 January 2018)

Hokkaido Regional Forest Office (2015) Report of fourth comprehensive forest investigations in headwaters of the Ishikari River, Hokkaido, Japan. Hokkaido Regional Forest Office, Sapporo (in Japanese)

Ishizuka M., Toyooka H., Osawa A., Kushima H., Kanazawa Y. Sato A. (1998) Secondary succession following catastrophic windthrow in a boreal forest in Hokkaido, Japan. J Sustain For 6:367–388. doi: 10.1300/J091v06n03_08

Kosugi R, Shibuya M, Ishibashi S (2016) Sixty-year post-windthrow study of stand dynamics in two natural forests differing in pre-disturbance composition. Ecosphere 7:1–9

Osawa A (1992) Development of a mixed-conifer forest in Hokkaido, northern Japan, following a catastrophic windstorm: A “parallel” model of plant succession. In: Kelty M.J., Larson B.C., Oliver C.D. (eds) The ecology of silviculture of mixed-species forests. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, pp 29–52

Sato A., Ishizuka M., Sugawara S., Toyooka H. (1985) Growth dynamics of advanced seedlings after damage to forest canopy by Typhoon No. 15 in 1954 — Analytical case study on Mt. Tarumae in Hokkaido. Trans Jpn For Soc 96:367–368 (in Japanese)

Tamate S., Kashiyama T., Sasanuma T., Takahashi K., Matsuoka H. (1977) On the distribution maps of forest wind damage by Typhoon No. 15, 1954 in Hokkaidō. Bull Gov For Exp Sta 289: 43–67 (in Japanese with English summary)

Tanouchi H, Utsugi H, Abe S (2003) Growth histories of trees in a coniferous forest after a severe disturbance caused by a typhoon in 1954. Trans Mtg Hokkaido Br Jpn For Soc 51:53–54 (in Japanese)

The scientific investigation group of the wind-damaged forests in Hokkaido (ed) (1959) A report of the scientific investigations of the forests wind-damage in 1954, Hokkaido, Japan. Japan Forest Technical Association, Tokyo (in Japanese)

Toyooka H, Ishizuka M, Osawa A, Kushima H., Kanazawa Y., Sato A. (1992) Forest succession over a thirty-four year period following a catastrophic windstorm in the headwaters of the River Ishikari, Hokkaido. Bull For For Prod Res Inst 363: 59–151 (in Japanese)