Abstract
We attempted to estimate the aboveground biomass of forest floor plants with CH-values multiplied by plant coverage (C) and height (H), in order to describe the food resources of sika deer at Senjugahara in Oku-Nikko, Tochigi. We also compared this method to the other estimation method with the plant coverage in our previous report. We observed the coverage and maximum height of individual plant species on the forest floor at two experimental sites. We later clipped aboveground parts of the plants divided them into five types of vegetation (trees, ferns, herbaceous plants such as Asteraceae, other forbs, and graminoids), and then measured the dry weights. A positive correlation was observed between the cumulative CH-value and aboveground biomass in each type of vegetation, with the correlation coefficient ranging from 0.8309 to 0.9978, when considering all the data for all sites collectively. The estimation by cumulative CH-value will improve the accuracy of predicting aboveground biomass more than the estimation by cumulative plant coverage for other forbs.
