Dominance of fagaceous species changes with succession in urban forests in Kyoto City, which would affect characteristics of their seedling emergence. We conducted seed-sowing experiments for four fagaceous species (Quercus variabilis, Q. serrata, Q. glauca, and Castanopsis cuspidata) in two forests with different successional stages, i.e. one is a mid-successional forest dominated by deciduous fagaceous species, such as Q. variabilis and Q. serrata, and the other is a later-successional forest dominated by an evergreen fagaceous species of C. cuspidata and compared their seedling emergence characteristics between forests and among species. Seedling emergence rates of Q. glauca and C. cuspidata were significantly lower in the evergreen forest, where their acorns were more susceptible to attack by bark beetles until seedling emergence, compared with in the deciduous forest. Many more acorns of Q. variabilis and Q. serrata were damaged by larvae of moths in the deciduous forest, compared with in the evergreen forest, which may contribute to lower emergence rates of their seedlings in the deciduous forest when their acorns were sown in the litter layer. These results suggest that seedling emergence of these four fagaceous species would be largely affected by changes in dominance of fagaceous species with succession, because of their density dependent mortality.

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We investigated the recovery of vegetation on the spur road established in several Cryptomeria japonica plantations from one to seven years after thinning. From GLM analysis, the year after establishment was considered the primary factor for the recovery of vegetation in most models. The scattering of branches had no effect. The mean number of species at the third year after establishment was 12.4 per m² and it was 10.9 per m² at the fifth to seventh year. The mean vegetation coverage was 58％ at the third year and 86％ at the fifth to seventh year. The number of species and vegetative coverage of herbaceous plants increased until the third year and decreased thereafter whereas these of woody plants increased by the fifth year and did not change thereafter. Meanwhile, vegetative coverage of Sasa palmate increased with the year. From these results, vegetation recovery of the spur road is considered to increase irrespective of the scattering of branches with a change of dominance from herbaceous to woody plants or bamboo grass at the third to fifth year after the establishment, and to contribute to the stabilization of road surface.

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Forest certification schemes have had a pivotal role in conserving biological diversity and enhancing ecosystem services in the field of sustainable forest management. This review has shown an increasing trend in forest certification research. In particular, the effects of forest certification on biological diversity and the natural environment were summarized, and future research directions were discussed. The number of research articles focusing on certification has sharply increased in foreign scientific journals, and many have focused on objective comparisons of certification programs. Only a few articles directly evaluated the conservation of rare and threatened species in certified forests. Many such articles indirectly showed the possibility of conserving these species through improvements in forest management practices via certification (e.g., preserving riparian areas in the case of logging). However, some authors assert that certification is of little value in minimizing the negative impacts of forestry, and that it does not play an important role in conserving biological diversity outside of nature reserves which were designated by laws. Research should be conducted to quantitatively analyze the impacts of certification on biological diversity conservation, and to evaluate outcomes of forest certification schemes on site. Certification plays an important role in promoting the integration of social and natural sciences within the field of forest science, and any research relating to it should be encouraged.

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Forests have been actively utilized for education. However, there have been no systematic or comprehensive review of forest education studies published in Japan, Oishi and Inoue (2014) selected 448 education-related studies from the bulletins published by the Japanese Forest Society and affiliated and related associations and thoroughly reviewed them in the category "specialized education and its educational sites such as forests and related exhibiting facilities." This paper further reviewed these studies on themes not covered by our previous report, including "educational ideas," "school education," "social education," " learners," "programs," and "leaders." Our work revealed a general history of forestry education studies: various educational ideas were proposed; targets on different stages of school education were considered; various social education entities were studied; and backgrounds of educational targets and effects of educational activities were examined. This paper also analyzes and defines several terms used in forestry education studies and presents a general background of the field.

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