Impact assessment of dam construction and forest management for Japanese macaque habitats in snowy areas

Abstract

Japanese macaques (Macaca fuscata) in their northernmost habitats represent a keystone species and play a central role in heavy snowfall ecosystems. However, distributions have been restricted by pre-war hunting, and populations are facing issues of natural forest losses caused by new dam constructions and massive conifer plantations. In the present study, we predicted the influences of these environmental conditions on macaque habitats during each season, and evaluated the effect of natural forest restoration as a mitigation measure. We constructed multiple habitat suitability models on the basis of different forest change scenarios, by using maximum entropy modeling (Maxent). We predicted the influence of each scenario by calculating the habitat unit (habitat quality × habitat quantity). We made the following predictions: (1) the influences of environmental conditions on habitat models vary seasonally, but dam construction destroys the optimum macaque habitats in every season; (2) restoration of conifer plantations to semi-natural forests does not always contribute to the improvement of total habitat unit, except in snowy seasons; and (3) in comparison with encouraging natural forest restoration in plantation areas and maintaining the standard-rotation plantation management, the implementation of long-rotation plantation in existing plantation areas provides more suitable alternative habitats for macaques in non-snowy seasons.

Human–Macaque Conflicts in Shrinking Communities: Recent Achievements and Challenges in Problem Solving in Modern Japan

“…One promising treatment is the long-rotation plantation management, with the rotation period set to 80-100 years, which has been introduced recently with the goal of both improving timber values and avoiding biodiversity loss (Nagaike 2012). According to the scenario analysis, this plantation management method could potentially improve macaque habitat units to levels comparable to those in natural broadleaf forests (Enari and Sakamaki-Enari 2014). Moreover, what should not be forgotten is that most of the tree species used in Japan's plantation silviculture are indigenous species originally observed mainly in the cool-temperate zone (Hayashi 1960), potentially having species-specific functions to sustain native ecosystem processes.…”

Review of aquatic species habitat simulation method and modelling

“…、河口 [64] 、河流 [14,65] 中鱼类的分布, 沉水植物种 [69] , 被应用到欧洲的鳟鱼 [70] 、中国的中华鲟 [62,71] [73] , 预测药用植物鸭嘴花 在喜马拉雅山脉附近的潜在分布 [74] , 模拟濒危树木 Ilexkhasiana Purk在印度东北部地区、Canacomyrica monticola在新喀里多尼亚的生境适宜度分布 [75,76] , 预 测外来入侵物种加拿大一枝黄花、检疫性杂草毒莴苣 在中国的潜在分布区域 [77,78] .…”