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Shiro TSUYUZAKI
Plant community ecology / Environmental conservation

Mount Usu / Sarobetsu post-mined peatland
From left: Crater basin in 1986 and 2006. Cottongrass / Daylily

(First update on October 10 2009. Last on Janurary 16 2012)

Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER)

LTER (長期生態学研究)

1980: LTER was foundedd in USA.
1993: ILTER Network was founded in 1993, following LTER and others.

Purposes

  1. Necessity of databse for long-term researches
  2. Necessity of intercommunion on the database
Permanent plot

Why do we need permanent plots in the study of long-term vegetation dynamics? (Bakker et al. 1996)

Obtaining external and internal causes of succession
Confirming the pathways of succession directly

Chronosequence (クロノシークエンス) is not enough to understand successional change because site history is so often important (Pickett 1989)
↓

Nature conservation

The geographical distribution of permanent plots (quadrats) in the Netherlands (Smits et al. 2002) → 70 years of permanent plot research in the Netherlands
Most long-term ecolgocial researches (LTER) have been conducted by permanent plots.

References

  • Bakker JP, Olff H, Willems JH & Zobel M. 1996. Why do we need permanent plots in the study of long-term vegetation dynamics? Journal of Vegetation Science 7: 147-156
  • Pickett STA. 1989. Space-for-time substitution as an alternative to long-term studies. In: Likens GE, editor. Long-term studies in ecology: Approaches and alternatives. Springer-Verlag, New York. pp. 110-135
  • Smits NAC, Schaminee JHJ & van Duuren L. 2002. 70 years of permanent plot research in the Netherlands. Applied Vegetation Science 5: 121-126

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Permanent plots I have monitored

Site

Period

Research methods
The crater basin of Mount Usu after the 1977-78eruptions 1983- 2 m × 5 m quadrats. Expanded to 5 m × 5 m quadrats in 1994
The foot of Mount Usu after the 2000 eruptions 2000- Line transect. Total length is 470 m
The summit area of Mount Koma, Hokkaido, Japan, after the 1996 eruptions 1996- 400 50 cm × 50 cm quadrats
Southwest slope on Mount Koma dominated by Larix kaempferi forest 1997- 16 20 m × 20 m qudartas (3-yr intervals), height and diamter of trees > 30 cm
Interior Alaska after wildfire in 2004 2005- 96 1 m × 1 m subplots within 16 10 m × 10 m plots

Papers explaining the survey designs

Mount Usu
  • Tsuyuzaki, S. 2009. Causes of plant community divergence in the early stages of volcanic succession. Journal of Vegetation Science 20: 959-969
Mount Koma
  • Akasaka, M. & Tsuyuzaki, S. 2009. Comparisons of recruitment, survival and growth in invasive and native tree saplings on a volcano. Plant Ecology 202: 235-245
  • Tsuyuzaki, S. & Hase, A. 2005. Plant community dynamics on the volcano Mount Koma, northern Japan, after the 1996 eruption. Folia Geobotanica 40: 319-330
Alaska
  • Tsuyuzaki, S., Kushida, K. & Kodama, Y. 2009. Recovery of surface albedo and plant cover after wildfire in a Picea mariana forest in interior Alaska. Climatic Change 93: 517-525

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References

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