Refueling Satoyama Woodland Restoration in Japan: Enhancing Restoration Practice and Experiences through Woodfuel Utilization

Abstract

Urban and peri-urban satoyama woodlands have become focal points of restoration throughout Japan. Prior to the abrupt shift to fossil fuels in the 1950-60s, villages coppiced these woods to produce a sustainable supply of wood fuel, a process that also sustained a dynamic woodland structure rich in biodiversity. Currently, amidst a "satoyama renaissance," thousands of volunteer groups are restoring management to abandoned woods. Yet while volunteers are the main drivers of the satoyama renaissance, volunteer management tends to be limited in spatial extent and focused on the "parkification" of woodlands. Through a case study of four satoyama restoration scenarios we found that reintroduction of coppicing for wood fuel-"refueling"-can play a role in addressing climate change through fossil fuel substitution. We suggest that this literal refueling of satoyama restoration could, in a more metaphorical sense, help to refuel restoration efforts by strengthening both restoration practice and the authenticity of restoration experiences. KEYWORDSbiomass, climate change, satoyama woodlands, urban ecological restoration ᮄ "Cities" have long been seen as the antithesis of "nature." Yet over the last few decades the conceptual wall partitioning the natural from the urban has been attacked and appears to have been finally breached. This storming of the nature/culture divide has come from many directions, but one key thrust has been to work through this dualism by bringing meta-concepts such as ecosystem and ecology, long the domain of people who theorize about pristine wildlands, to bear on urban environments. With this conceptual progress well established, we can now turn to the more substantive task of improving the quality of urban ecologies. The importance of this task cannot be overstated, for Nature and Culture 5(3), Winter 2010: 251-276 © Berghahn Journals

Urban Foraging in Berlin: People, Plants and Practices within the Metropolitan Green Infrastructure

“…Data organization and response categorization depended on the type of question. Where appropriate, answers to closed-ended questions were grouped together into discrete categories (e.g., age started foraging was translated to child (0-12), adolescent (13)(14)(15)(16)(17) or adult (18+)). Responses to open-ended questions were written out and compared across all interviews; similar answers were then grouped under common themes, and remaining unique answers were assigned to an "other" category (e.g., hindrances to foraging were grouped into "pollution", "private property", etc.…”

“…In more recent years, a young, but growing body of research has added considerably to the few pre-existing studies, e.g., [15][16][17]. Cumulatively, the results confirm that urban foraging is an "everyday" (i.e., regular or normal) and surprisingly common practice, both in the Global North [11,18,19] and South [20][21][22]: For example, in a robust household survey study, Robbins et al [23] found that almost 18% of randomly selected residents in four New England states (USA) foraged regularly; more than half of gatherers lived in cities, among them both poorer and wealthier populations.…”

Urban Foraging: A Ubiquitous Human Practice Overlooked by Urban Planners, Policy, and Research

“…Given the documentation of people foraging in such diverse settings as several US cities [11,13], Bangalore [19], Delhi [28], Stockholm [29], Edinburgh [23], urban and peri-urban areas in Japan [30], Uganda 45], and towns in South Africa [27,31], there is reason to believe it occurs in cities and towns hitherto not researched. In the studies referred to here, the species harvested included fungi, flowers, berries, medicinal plants, and much more.…”

Considerations for Sustainable Biomass Production in Quercus-Dominated Forest Ecosystems

“…Extraction of nutrients is still a common practice, e.g. litter collection in the Satoyama woodlands of Japan [33]. Since all of these practices tend to extract compartments with a relatively high nutrient content in comparison to wood, soil acidification and nutrient depletion was a common threat in Central European forest ecosystems.…”

“…Standards typically result from genetic regeneration. This multi-aged traditional system supports sustainable production of timber and non-timber forest products, while enhancing ecosystem diversity and wildlife habitat [41], which is also highlighted in the similar Japanese management system of Satoyama [33]. The rotation period for coppice (understorey) is typically 30 years [39,42], hence holding a middle position between planted short rotation woody crops (SRWC) [35] and traditional high forests.…”