Abstract
Soil scarification is a natural regeneration practice that has been developed as a low-cost birch reforestation technique on Hokkaido, the northernmost main island of Japan. Scarification removes forest floor organic matter and surface soil. Contrary to our expectations, some stands had regenerated along control (non-scarified) lines. To clarify the effects of soil disturbance due to scarification on the locations of regenerated birch trees, we investigated the physicochemical properties of surface soils (depth: 0–5 cm) at 25 scarification-regenerated birch forests treated from the 1970s to the 1990s. In the strip-scarified stands examined in this study, the locations of regenerated birch trees on treatment and control lines were not explained by soil properties. The results of this study show that the various patterns in distribution of regenerated birch trees observed in these stands might be due to combinations of various factors that are not limited to soil properties.
