Against deer damage to the forest vegetation of the Ohdaigahara subalpine plateau, Ministry of the Environment (MOE) has carried out managed culls of deer since 2002. In addition, MOE built a fence to each representative vegetation site and surveyed the cover and height of understory plants both in and out of fences between 2003 and 2013 to examine changes in the understory vegetation in response to decreasing deer density. MOE also built fences, one by one, in places where the necessity of urgent protection using the method of adaptive management was recognized. As a result of the survey, it became apparent that, within the fences, the cover and height of plants increased, and the level of deer density got close to the target density. We conclude that the method of nature restoration applied to the Ohdaigahara subalpine plateau demonstrates a model of nature restoration in a natural region which suffered ecosystem damage caused by deer.
The Kinoeki Project is a community activity in which small forest owners sell logging residues they have collected. This study clarifies the actual conditions and the problems of the Kinoeki Project, and considers the sustainability and significance of the project. According to our questionnaire survey, registered forest owners comprise approximately 10% or less of all forest owners in most of the study area. Of 18 organizations, six chose "administration without relying on subsidies" as a problem of the project. In all areas, the Kinoeki Project has a deficit balance, after deducting subsidies from income. This means that the project is financially unstable. According to our break-even analysis, it is necessary to sell collected logging residues as wood fuel at a high price in order to increase the number of collected logs and to reduce the purchase price.
Much emphasis is now being given to research and development of plant factories which daily produce a large volume of highquality vegetables under artificially controlled environments. One of the important issues to be considered for the management and the daily operations of the plant factories is to find a set of suitable customers and/or markets to which the daily produced vegetables are sold and delivered. The current wholesale markets of the vegetables are not suitable for trading the high-quality vegetables produced by the plant factories, therefore, a new market is required to sell and to buy the products made by the plant factories. A new trading market system is proposed, to sell and to buy the lettuces supplied by the plant factories, based on the stock exchange mechanisms, in this paper. An estimation method of yield rate is also proposed to generate a suitable volume of sales for the plant factories. Some case studies have been carried out to verify the effectiveness of the proposed trading market.
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