Description
Long-term monitoring of a forest tree community is a basis for understanding forest structure and dynamics, and for evaluating ecosystem functions such as primary production. Because global climate change has impacted and will change the forest ecosystems from local to global scales, it is essential to document long-term monitoring data of the forests to examine the temporal and geographical trends of forest changes. We here report the monitoring data of 45 forest plots (average area: 0.69 ha) from 27 sites in Japan. The plots are located with latitude ranges from N 32.38 to N 43.36, and with elevation ranges from 8 m to 2453 m above sea level. These plots include both old-growth and secondary forests, and cover various forest biomes, such as warm-temperate evergreen forests, temperate deciduous broadleaved forests, and boreal or sub-alpine coniferous forests. In each plot, all living trees and liana larger than a certain minimum size (basically 15 cm stem girth at breast height) were repeatedly measured, and survival and recruitment of stems were recorded. Monitoring period varies among plots from 5 to 40 years with the average of 17.3 years. The tree measurement data are presented as a format common to that of the preceding Monitoring Sites 1000 Project in Japan, and as a sample-based Darwin Core format. This dataset expands existing open monitoring data of Japanese forests and thereby facilitates further meta-analysis on forest community structures and their changes in relation to climate change and other drivers. This dataset is published as a data paper in Ecological Research (see https://doi.org/10.1111/1440-1703.12457).
Data Records
The data in this sampling event resource has been published as a Darwin Core Archive (DwC-A), which is a standardized format for sharing biodiversity data as a set of one or more data tables. The core data table contains 337 records.
2 extension data tables also exist. An extension record supplies extra information about a core record. The number of records in each extension data table is illustrated below.
This IPT archives the data and thus serves as the data repository. The data and resource metadata are available for download in the downloads section. The versions table lists other versions of the resource that have been made publicly available and allows tracking changes made to the resource over time.
Versions
The table below shows only published versions of the resource that are publicly accessible.
How to cite
Researchers should cite this work as follows:
National Institute for Environmental Studies (2024) Forest monitoring data of 45 plots over the Japanese archipelago during the period of 1980-2021. Version 1. National Institute for Environmental Studies. Dataset/Sampling-event.
Rights
Researchers should respect the following rights statement:
The publisher and rights holder of this work is National Institute of Genetics, ROIS. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY 4.0) License.
GBIF Registration
This resource has been registered with GBIF, and assigned the following GBIF UUID: b471e8c8-237a-4444-b2ef-0d5ba1903ead. National Institute of Genetics, ROIS publishes this resource, and is itself registered in GBIF as a data publisher endorsed by GBIF Japan.
Keywords
Samplingevent; Plot network; Forest dynamics; Tree species abundance; Stem diameter; Tree demography; Time-line data; Long-term monitoring; Samplingevent
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Geographic Coverage
Japan
| Bounding Coordinates | South West [32.377, 131.173], North East [43.361, 144.661] |
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Taxonomic Coverage
Trees and liana of gymnosperm and angiosperm of 232 species from 113 genera of 54 families.
| Family | Actinidiaceae, Adoxaceae, Anacardiaceae, Apocynaceae, Aquifoliaceae, Araliaceae, Aucubaceae, Betulaceae, Cannabaceae, Celastraceae, Cephalotaxaceae, Cercidiphyllaceae, Clethraceae, Cornaceae, Cupressaceae, Daphniphyllaceae, Diervillaceae, Ebenaceae, Ericaceae, Euphorbiaceae, Eupteleaceae, Fabaceae, Fagaceae, Hamamelidaceae, Hydrangeaceae, Juglandaceae, Lamiaceae, Lardizabalaceae, Lauraceae, Magnoliaceae, Malvaceae, Moraceae, Myricaceae, Oleaceae, Pinaceae, Rhamnaceae, Rosaceae, Rutaceae, Sabiaceae, Salicaceae, Sapindaceae, Schisandraceae, Sciadopityaceae, Simaroubaceae, Stachyuraceae, Staphyleaceae, Styracaceae, Symplocaceae, Taxaceae, Ternstroemiaceae, Theaceae, Trochodendraceae, Ulmaceae, Vitaceae |
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Temporal Coverage
| Formation Period | 1980-2021 |
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Sampling Methods
Tree measurement was performed generally based on the protocol of the Monitoring Site 1000 project (Ishihara et al. 2011). All living trees and liana larger than a certain minimum size were repeatedly measured using a tape measure or a caliper. Minimum size of measured stem (in girth at breast height [GBH] or tree height) differs among the plots, but all the stems with greater than or equal to 15.7 cm in GBH (5 cm in DBH) were measured, except one plot with the minimum size of 31.4 cm of GBH (10 cm in DBH; PL18). Survival and recruitment of stems were also recorded in each census. Total number of censuses per plot ranges from 2 to 23, with the average of 6.0.
| Study Extent | The 45 forest plots (coded as PL01–PL45 in this paper) are distributed throughout the Japanese archipelago. Plot latitude ranges from N 32.38 to N 43.36, and longitude ranges from E 131.17 to E 144.66. Elevation of the plots range from 8 m to 2453 m above sea level. Monitoring period per plot ranges from 5 to 40 years and the average is 17.3 years. Total monitoring period ranges from 1980 to 2021. A total of 269 censuses were performed in all the 45 plots. Plot size ranges from 0.0325 ha (plot ID: PL41) to 6.25 ha (plot ID: PL18), with an average of 0.69 ha. Most of the plots have rectangle shapes, but one plot has an irregular shape, and two plots have rectangle outlines but have non-covered areas inside them. These plots were all established in natural forests without cultivated or planted trees, and have experienced no large natural or anthropogenic disturbance (e.g., logging) during the monitoring. Some plots have suffered from insect damage (mainly the oak wilt disease by a bark beetle), deer browsing, or windstorm damage during their monitoring periods. The 45 plots can be categorized into two forest age classes; old-growth forest which had persisted at least 150 years without large disturbances until the start of monitoring (28 plots in 18 sites), and secondary forests, which have established within 150 years before the start of monitoring (17 plots in 11 sites). |
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| Quality Control | All plants were identified to species-level by the experts. Scientific names followed the YList (Yonekura and Kajita 2003) and were checked against the GBIF Backbone Taxonomy (GBIF Secretariat 2021). |
Method step description:
- Tree census data was formatted into event data. A plot ID was stored in locationID. When a census date was not available, a date range based on the Japanese fiscal year was provided in eventDate.
- For the measurement in which individuals were identified, occurrence data was extracted from the GBH measurement data by a combination of a plot ID, an individual identification code (*case-sensitive), a census date, and species. A combination of a plot ID and an individual identification code was stored in organismID. For the measurement in which individuals were not identified (i.e. some in PL18 and all in PL02, PL05 and PL40), a combination of a plot ID, a census date, and species was used to extract occurrence data and therefore organismID was not provided.
- Measurement records including GBH and the proportion of tree trunk area where bark is stripped by deers, were created for each stem observed.
Bibliographic Citations
- Ishihara MI, Suzuki SN, Nakamura M, et al (2011) Forest stand structure, composition, and dynamics in 34 sites over Japan. Ecol Res 26:1007 10.1007/s11284-011-0847-y
- Yonekura K, Kajita T (2003) BG Plants: Japanese name-Scientific name index (YList). In: Retrieved July. http://ylist.info/
- GBIF Secretariat (2021) GBIF Backbone Taxonomy. Checklist dataset https://doi.org/10.15468/39omei accessed via GBIF.org on 2021-08-12. 10.15468/39omei
Additional Metadata
| Alternative Identifiers | https://gbif.jp/ipt/resource?r=nies_jpforests |
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