Shunryu Kaneko, a master's student at the Graduate School of Agricultural and Life Sciences, the University of Tokyo, Assistant Professor Hyunbae Kim, Associate Professor Takunyo Yoshioka, and Toshio Nitami, a project researcher, make sustainable forest management possible with a limited local labor force. We built a regional forestry circulation model to
According to the University of Tokyo, most of Japan's forests were created through post-war expansion afforestation, but after the period of high economic growth, domestic timber was overwhelmed by imported timber, and as a result, the share of domestic timber fell sharply. The number of planted forests that have
First, the research group proceeded with clear-cutting of the artificial forest in order to return the tree to its original age. A model was constructed to promote utilization thinning in a year's time.
Assuming that a forestry business entity consisting of 10 workers will work 200 days a year, we will search for candidate sites that can handle this labor force and put it into practice.Thinning and clear-cutting will be carried out for forests that have not been targeted, if the labor force becomes available.
When this model was applied to the Nishikawa forestry area in Saitama Prefecture, it was estimated that the amount of accumulated forest would temporarily decrease due to clear-cutting, but that it would stabilize after around the 40th year. After 60 years, 71% of the total area could be returned to normal logging cycles.
The research group found that the forest management system started in 2019, and long-term management of local forests on a municipal basis has become more demanded than ever. It is said that it will be useful for formulating.
Paper information:[Biomass and Bioenergy] Developing a model for managing sustainable regional forest biomass resources: System dynamics-based optimization
