Monitoring Campsite Soil Erosion by Structure-from-Motion Photogrammetry: A Case Study of Kuro-dake Campsites in Daisetsuzan National Park, Japan.

Camping in the mountain regions has several negative impacts, including soil erosion in the campsites. In many national parks, efforts to monitor and manage campsite soil erosion are insufficient or even lacking. Owing to the lack of implementation of formal management practices, the current and former Kuro-dake campsites in Daisetsuzan National Park (DNP) have suffered serious soil erosion. To gain more insights into campsite soil erosion, we investigated these two campsites by short-term monitoring through structure-from-motion (SfM) photogrammetry surveys with ground control points (GCPs). These surveys were conducted three times consecutively in the current (2017, 2018, and 2019) and former Kuro-dake campsites (2018, 2019, and 2020). Two sets of digital elevation models (DEMs) of the current and former campsites were produced with the resolutions of 0.015 and 0.025 m, respectively. We detected that the elevation changes exceeded by 0.03-0.04 m, using the DEMs of difference (DoDs) maps. Soil loss around the gullies was observed at each campsite. In the current campsite, soil losses of 2.20 and 0.30 m3 were identified in the periods of 2017-2018 and 2018-2019, respectively. In the former campsite, soil losses of 1.55 and 22.27 m3 were identified during 2018-2019 and 2019-2020, respectively. In addition, a large amount of exposed mineral soil with exposed rocks was observed at each campsite. Various erosion rates obtained in the short-term study indicated the importance of continuous monitoring. High-resolution and high-accuracy topographic products generated from the SfM photogrammetry survey enabled the detection of a small amount of campsite soil erosion and provided a new method to monitor campsite degradation. This study demonstrated that a simple closure of the former campsite in 1992 failed to reduce the impact of soil erosion. In the case of the current and former Kuro-dake campsites, burying the gullies with boulders and setting up boulders or wood fences at the termini of the gullies would be a potential solution to stop or mitigate further erosion. Thus, formal management including monitoring and maintenance of site conditions should be introduced to Kuro-dake as well as other unmanaged campsites in DNP.

Topsoil microbial community structure responds to land cover type and environmental zone in the Western Pacific region.

Soil encompasses diverse microbial communities that are essential for fundamental ecosystem functions such as biogeochemical cycling. To better understand underlying biogeochemical processes, it is necessary to know the structure of soil archaeal and bacterial communities and their responses to edaphic and climate variables within and across various land cover types (LCTs) and environmental zones (ENZs). Here we sampled eighty-nine sites across five ENZs and four LCTs within the Western Pacific region. Through leveraging the second-generation sequencing of topsoil samples, we showed that α-diversity (taxonomic diversity) of archaea strongly varied within LCTs, whereas bacterial α-diversity was significantly controlled by both LCT and ENZ. Soil archaea and bacteria showed global niche differentiation associated with contrasting diversity responses to latitude and differential responses of microbial diversity patterns to edaphic and climate variables within LCTs and ENZs. In contrast to α-diversity, microbial ß-diversity (the compositional dissimilarity between sites) was majorly governed by ENZs, particularly for archaea (P < 0.01). Our results highlight the importance of LCTs and ENZs for understanding soil microbial contributions to nutrient dynamics and ecosystem resilience under land-use intensification and climate change.

Pastoral Practices and Common Use of Pastureland: The Case of Karakul, North-Eastern Tajik Pamirs.

This study describes pastoralism practiced in the Karakul village, Northeast of Tajikistan, and discusses its sustainability. Tajikistan introduced a market economy at independence in 1991, and pastoralism is now practiced on a family-unit basis. The families in Karakul graze livestock in their summer pastureland (jailoo) and move their livestock to winter pastureland around the village (kyshtoo). They make groups for pasturage with several families in jailoo and also in kyshtoo. Each group pastures their livestock every day, using a system called novad. In addition to jailoo and kyshtoo, they also practice pastoralism on two additional kinds of pastureland: küzdöö (spring pastureland) and bäärlöö (autumn pastureland). Still, now, the Karakul villagers use their pastureland as the commons: the Karakul village has not established private possession of pastureland even after a law enabled the division of common pastureland among individual families. Using the pastureland as the commons would be preferred by the local pastoralists. However, the free pasture access as the commons may result in a loss of sustainability as a trade-off. Regardless of privatization or the continued use of the commons, the possible development of the uneven use of the pastureland is inferred and should be avoided, and the introduction of a local management structure is urgently needed.

Development of a Space-charge-sensing System.

A system for remotely measuring the distribution of air space charge in real time is developed. The system consists of a loudspeaker and an electric field antenna. By propagating a burst of directional sound wave from the speaker, a modulation in the space charge and, therefore, an electric field change at ground is produced. The distribution of the space charge density is derived from the E-field change which can be measured by the E- field antenna. The developed system has been confirmed by both laboratory and field experiments.