Miho Morimoto is a second year PhD student in Natural Resources Management. Her paper, Forest restoration following a windthrow: how legacy retention versus plantation after salvaging alters the trajectory of initial recovery, was just published in Landscape Ecology and Engineering. The work was done in northern Japan as part of her master’s project at Hokkaido University, Japan.
Japanese forest management policy for decades has been based on maximizing economic values of forests. More recently, Japanese forest management has gradually increased its emphasis on ecological values, such as biodiversity. Morimoto’s objective was to compare the revegetation trajectory in the first three years after a large windthrow event between sites, salvage logged vs. not salvaged, in terms of the conversion of forest plantations into more natural forest systems.
Salvage logging after natural disturbance has been a common forest management practice in Japan in which damaged trees are taken away for economic revenues. Morimoto’s study showed the importance of leaving biological legacies created by windthrow in plantations when restoration of more natural forest conditions is the goal. Salvage logging removed biological legacies, such as residual seedlings and coarse woody debris, which is expected to result in delay or failure in restoring diverse natural forest.
Morimoto is pictured on a bluff above the Yukon River collecting aspen samples in August. (Photo by Glenn Juday)
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