A Forest Health Check in Tottori: Pictures of Leaves and Blurry Insects

Last time I made a post about the scenery near my home. I've also visited a forest in Wakasa – about 35 kilometers away from here.


Why a mountain forest in Wakasa?
Well... Let's have a look at lumber production in Japan.
A lot of mountain forests in Tottori are not natural, but planted for lumber. So the forest mainly consist of a single, fast-growing pine species. In the case of the forest visited, this was the sugi (杉) species.
The cycle of cutting and planting actually allowed for rich forest diversity. This practice of nature existing in coexistence – and partially thanks to – human influence, is a concept called “satoyama”. Which I am writing a paper about, actually...

But here's the problem: lumber prices dropped. Business being no longer lucrative, the pines don't get cut anymore. And so they grow bigger and bigger. Planted in tight rows, the growing trees loot all the sunlight from the poor starving weeds below.
Undergrowth perishes, animals go on a pine-bark diet and the forest's nature deteriorates.

Recently, an activity was organized to keep track of the forest's health: a yearly forest health check-up.

And I participated. :) Professor Nagamatsu introduced me to the event, and allowed me to participate – even though the application date was over already. *round of grateful applause*
This year there were a little over 40 participants. Guess the event is not well-known yet...

Quite a long intro, isn't it? So... Let's move on to the pictures. The first forest was planted on top of ancient paddy fields.
I found it difficult to imagine that these were once sunny rice terraces... With croaking frogs and butterflies...

I think I saw a deer here, but I'm not certain. It was big, brown and fast. That's all I know. Does seeing a flying brown blob even count as deer sighting? Actually no, it doesn't.


The second forest was quite different... For one, it was STEEP.
Littered with rocks, too. Rocks, and tree roots on top of the rocks. That made climbing quite a challenge - feet getting twisted, rocks stumbling down... The first time a rock came crashing down, I had a mini-heart attack! I thought one of the volunteers was rolling to his death!

Now, what did we do exactly? Measuring. Tree circumference, number of weed species present, slope angle... Especially measuring a tree's height was difficult! No, we didn't climb them. We used some tools and calculations, but the problem was that to calculate correctly, you needed plain view of the tree from top to bottom. And as you read in the introduction: these are fast-growing trees, planted closely together and their planned cutting is long overdue.

 

And at last, after completing the check-up, we left a little wooden board saying we carried out the forest health check, with our names at the back.

The rope and wood we used won't pollute the forest.
It'll get slowly digested by the ecosystem ;)

Sadly, in both forests we visited, the conclusion was the same: too many fat trees binging on sunlight. The forest needs some maintenance... Luckily, as you saw in the pictures, it's not yet too late: there's still some undergrowth and specks of light coming through.

Let's end with a few more pictures from the "Forest Health Check" adventure. :)

 

The next post will be about some plants and animals I encountered. For now, let's just say that I regret not bringing a macro lens to Japan...

Actually, maybe I'll post three times this week. There's also an update needed for my older post "How About Doing Something? Challenges: Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Yearly ": the 100 day challenge has ended, and I want to try a month-challenge.

Note: some images were edited (cropped or contrast upped).