Kiritappu Mire in Eastern Hokkaido is designated as a national monument, a quasi-national park, and a Ramsar site, and it is one of Japan’s representative wetlands.　Many of the marginal areas in the mire have been changed into lands for residence and fishery, thus the Kiritappu Wetland National Trust has been involved in the purchase of private lands, conservation, and restoration of the plants and animals in and around the mire.　The organization started a wetland vegetation restoration project of a 0.4 ha site in April 2015 by removing layers of surface soil and sand which had been introduced as a kelp drying area.　In this study, we revealed the vegetation succession of the restoration site from 2015 to 2021 and evaluated the effects of the restoration measure.　We set up 42 plots with a dimension of 2 m×2 m in the restoration site and recorded the coverage of plant species every year except 2020.　The mean overall coverage in the plots increased annually.　The coverage in the final observation year considerably exceeded that of the adjacent control site （original vegetation） dominated by Carex lyngbyei.　Dominant species in the restoration site have been replaced multiple times;Juncus bufonius and Juncus wallichianus were dominant in the first two years, Juncus decipiens, Juncus tenuis, and Trifolium repens in the next three years （3^rd-5^th）, and Juncus fauriei and Eleocharis kamtschatica f. kamtschatica in the final year （7^th year）.　The Bray-Curtis similarity index between the restoration and the control plots was extremely low with a value of 0.099 even in the final year.　The dominance of Juncus species implied that the vegetation change in this restoration site was typical of early secondary succession in mires.　The topsoil removal was effective for the regeneration of wetland vegetation in the site, but longer-term monitoring is needed to ascertain whether the restoration of the original vegetation is feasible.

Abstract:The degradation and loss of mountain mires due to global warming or deer impacts have been concerned in Japan, thus records of current vegetation in mountain mires are useful for their future conservation and restoration goals.　Moreover, mire vegetation records in various mountain ranges should enable the evaluation of the environmental factors that affect vegetation in the mires.　However, in Hokkaido, Northern Japan, vegetation has not been surveyed for more than half of the mountain mires, and mire vegetation frameworks considering environmental gradients are very limited.　In this study, we recorded the vegetation of two unsurveyed mires (Kagaminuma Mire and Tekagaminuma Mire) located in the Niseko Mountains, Southwestern Hokkaido in 2020 and 2021.　In addition, we compared vegetation and environmental factors including geography, climate and topography among 23 mountain mires in Hokkaido to reveal the characteristics of the two study mires.　Three plant communities in Kagaminuma Mire and seven plant communities in Tekagaminuma Mire were found.　The major plant communities in these mires dominated by Sphagnum species, Carex middendorffii, and Vaccinium oxycoccos were identified as typical of mountain mires in Central Honshu to Hokkaido.　The cluster analysis of the floristic composition classified the 23 mountain mires into three groups and both two study mires belonged to the group with the lowest number of species and without any alpine species.　Nonmetric multidimensional scaling based on vegetation and correlation analysis with environmental factors indicated that temperature and elevation were the most strongly correlated factors with the ordination (squared correlation coefficient = 0.60-0.89).　The two study mires were characterized by the warmest climate among the mountain mires in Hokkaido.　The close relationship between vegetation and temperature has also suggested that the floristic composition in the mire group with the coldest climate and many unique alpine plants could change because of the future warmer climate.

To clarify the characteristics of lucidophyllous forest flora of artificial lucidophyllous forests dominated by Cinnamomum camphora, which are conserved as shrine forests, we surveyed the component species of lucidophyllous forests （hereinafter lucidophyllous elements） and the habitat conditions of such forests with various areas （300-13000 m²） in urban areas of southeastern Hyogo Prefecture, Japan, and compared the results with those of the natural lucidophyllous forests （shrine forests） in the surrounding areas. A slightly higher positive correlation between the number of lucidophyllous elements and forest area was observed in artificial forests. The artificial forests tended to have fewer lucidophyllous elements than that of natural forests. The same was true for species of tree, shrub, ground herb （except for fern）, ground fern, liana, anemochory, and endozoochory. Thirty-three species found in natural forests showed lower occurrence frequency in artificial forests. This result seems to be mainly attributable to three factors associated with artificial forests:lack of a source of lucidophyllous elements in the surrounding areas, lack of habitats with moist soil conditions, and undergrowth cutting. On the other hand, nineteen species found in artificial forests showed lower occurrence frequency in natural lucidophyllous forests. They are generally used as greening/gardening plants, and most of them are reported as invading species to isolated forests. These results suggest that the lucidophyllous forest flora of artificial forests is characterized by invading greening/gardening plant species as well as planted species.