Long‐term monthly climate data at the forest stations of Kyoto University

Abstract

Long‐term climate monitoring by universities provides fundamental data for various disciplines in the natural sciences. Kyoto University once managed 10 university forest stations and is currently managing five. At these stations, climate data have been monitored almost since the establishment of each station until today, with the exception of the stations in foreign countries. We compiled and report the monthly climate data at these forest stations from the start of monitoring until December 2018. These data are important for investigating environmental changes in East Asia, including China (Taiwan), South Korea (Chosen) and Russia (Sakhalin, Karafuto) over the last 100 years. Long‐term monitoring often involves minor and major changes in the monitoring procedures, devices and even monitoring sites due to unavoidable circumstances, such as technological advances, changes in standard methods and climatic and anthropogenic disasters. Therefore, associated metadata on the monitoring methods are also important. We also compiled metadata on changes in monitoring methods. In addition, to examine the effects of changes in the methods on the observed climate data, we compared the values recorded before and after the change for each climate variable at each monitoring site. Methodological changes affected only a few variables, with the exception of humidity. Careful interpretation may be required when a researcher uses humidity data in any analysis. The complete data set for this abstract published in the Data Paper section of the journal is available in electronic format in MetaCat in JaLTER at http://db.cger.nies.go.jp/JaLTER/metacat/metacat/ERDP-2020-03.1/jalter-en.

Comparison of macroinvertebrate assemblages in a stream before and after fine sedimentation by deer‐induced forest floor degradation

“…Snowmelt, the rainy season and typhoons must be considered when assessing the roles of habitat changes and interspecific interactions in the assemblage dynamics of stream organisms (Poff & Ward, 1989;Poff et al, 1997). At the sampling site, large floods occurred in September 2013 and October 2017 (Nakagawa, 2019a(Nakagawa, , 2019bNakagawa et al, 2020). A large amount of fine sediment may have been transported from upstream sites to the riparian area of the sampling site at those times, and the stored sediments might have supplied fine substrate materials to the streambed (Church, 2002).…”

“…The study was conducted at the Ashiu Forest Research Station of the Field Science Education and Research Center, Kyoto University (41.9 km 2 , 35 20 0 N, 135 45 0 E). From 1998 to 2018, annual precipitation, temperature, and maximum snow depth at the research station were 2396 ± 309 mm, 12.2 ± 0.6 C, and 1.01 ± 0.40 m (mean ± SD), respectively (Nakagawa et al, 2020). The forest is dominated by primary and secondary temperate forests and conifer plantations, of which <0.02 km 2 is subject to residential or agricultural use (Nakagawa, 2019a) or has not experienced clear cutting in the past 30 years (>0.01 km 2 ).…”

“…The Ashiu Research Forest is in northern Kyoto Prefecture, central Japan, and contains the upper catchment of the Yura River. This forest is managed by Kyoto University and is well protected from anthropogenic influences over a large area (Nakagawa et al, 2020). From the 1920s to the 1990s, the floor of the forest was covered mostly by diverse herbs, small bamboos, shrubs, and woody seedlings (Yasuda & Nagamasu, 1995), but damage to the forest floor vegetation by deer overbrowsing has been apparent since the late 1990s, and most of the forest floor had been denuded by the late 2000s (Kato & Okuyama, 2004;Mizuki et al, 2020).…”

Radiocarbon signature reveals that most springtails depend on carbon from living plants

“…The research site was a warm temperate natural forest of Japanese cypress ( Chamaecyparis obtusa ), one of the major species for timber production in Japan, at the Kamigamo Experimental Forest Station of Kyoto University, Japan (35°04′ N, 135°43′ E) [30]. The vegetation consisted of a canopy layer of C. obtusa and an understory of shrubs, such as Cleyera japonica , Eurya japonica and C. obtusa saplings.…”

Relationships between the eDNA concentration obtained from metabarcoding and stream fish abundance estimated by the removal method under field conditions

“…The principal flood events are attributable to snowmelt in spring, heavy precipitation in early summer, and typhoons in late summer. From 1998 to 2018, annual precipitation, temperature, and maximum snow depth at the valley were 2609.4 ± 379.4 mm, 10.1 ± 1.4°C, and 1.70 ± 0.54 m (mean ± SD), respectively (Nakagawa et al, 2020). The catchments of the tributaries are covered with cool temperate primary deciduous forests.…”