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This study investigates temporal changes in the distribution of air dose rates at forest floors from 2012 to 2016 by measuring air dose rates at a height of 10 cm. The study was conducted at four different topography forest sites in Fukushima Prefecture, Japan. At each forest site, the air dose rate was found to have decreased by 7%-22% over time from 2012 to 2016 owing to the movement of radiocesium from organic layers to mineral soil layers in the forest site. However, the spatial distribution patterns of air dose rates did not change at these forest sites over five years. Besides, high correlations between air dose rates and organic plus surface mineral soil inventories were found at these forest sites during most of study years. Therefore, little changes in the spatial distribution of air dose rates could be caused by radiocesium retention at the same location in these forest sites. No statistical correlation between air dose rates and slope gradients was found in the two hilly forest sites with steep slopes above 35°. Accordingly, this study shows that the distribution patterns of air dose rates in the forest floors remained stable depending on the spatial distribution of radiocesium, which formed in the early phase after the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant accident., (Copyright © 2020 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.)

This data paper reports census data of ground-dwelling beetle and other fauna of the forest floor environment; collections were made from a network of 22 forest sites in Japan. To our knowledge, this represents the largest dataset for long-term monitoring of a ground-dwelling beetle community and other taxa in a ground environment in forests, which covers a broad climatic range in the temperate zone and is freely available. The network forms part of the Monitoring Sites 1000 Project launched by the Ministry of the Environment, Japan. It covers subalpine, cool- and warm-temperate and subtropical climatic zones and the four major forest types of Japan. Thirty-three permanent plots usually 1 ha in size were established in old-growth, secondary natural and a few plantation forests. Censuses of the ground-dwelling beetle community were conducted using pitfall trapping and forest floor environment monitoring every year from 2004 to the present. During the initial 9 years of the census (2004-2012), 59,762 beetle individuals (including 3182 larvae) of more than 314 species were recorded. This dataset includes taxonomy and biomass of each beetle individual and each taxonomic group of other invertebrates coincidently captured in pitfall trapping. The dataset also includes data related to ground coverage by forest floor vegetation, dry mass of the accumulated organic litter layer, and carbon and nitrogen contents and cellulose decomposition rate in organic layer and surface mineral soil. The data could be used to investigate geographical patterns and intra- and inter-annual dynamics of individual body mass, populations and community structures of ground-dwelling beetles, and their relationships with the forest floor environment. Furthermore, the data could be analyzed with other open datasets related to tree community dynamics and litter fall continuously measured in the same study plots. This dataset also provides information related to the distribution and average body mass of each beetle species. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Because of the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant accident, forest ecosystems in wide areas were contaminated with 137 Cs. It is important to characterize the behavior of 137 Cs after its deposition onto forest surface environments for evaluating and preventing long-term radiation risks. In the present study, 137 Cs vertical distributions in the soil profile were observed repeatedly at five forest sites with different vegetation types for 4.4 years after the accident in 2011, and 137 Cs migration in the organic layer and mineral soil was analyzed based on a comparison of models and observations. Cesium-137 migration from the organic layer to the underlying mineral soil was represented by a two-component exponential model. Cesium-137 migration from the organic layer was faster than that observed in European forests, suggesting that the mobility and bioavailability of 137 Cs could be suppressed rapidly in Japanese forests. At all sites, 137 Cs transfer in mineral soil could be reproduced by a simple diffusion equation model with continuous 137 Cs supply from the organic layer. The diffusion coefficients of 137 Cs in the mineral soil were estimated to be 0.042-0.55 cm 2  y -1 , which were roughly comparable with those of European forest soils affected by the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant accident. Model predictions using the determined model parameters indicated that 10 years after the accident, more than 70% of the deposited 137 Cs will migrate to the mineral soil but only less than 10% of the total 137 Cs inventory will penetrate deeper than 10 cm in the mineral soil across all sites. The results of the present study suggest that the 137 Cs deposited onto Japanese forest ecosystems will be retained in the surface layers of mineral soil for a long time., (Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)