Yamanashi Prefecture Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute

Abstract The intensity of grazing on palatable species can vary depending on the neighboring plants in plant communities. We aimed to search for species whose biomass can have a positive effect on palatable plants near them in a grassland under grazing pressure by sika deer. We selected Iris sanguinea Hornem. as an indicator species of ease of being grazed because it is a palatable and past dominant species before the increase in deer density. We estimated the effects of the biomass of neighboring plant species, soil water content, and distance from the forest edge on the height of I. sanguinea. The height was remarkably and positively affected by the biomass of four graminoid species with larger biomass and slightly positively affected by the biomass of a toxic species. This study suggests that the biomass of less‐palatable species may have an important influence on the size of palatable species under grazing pressure by deer.

With the development of the Internet and the spread of smart devices, almost all generations nowadays are using smartphones and tablet PC on daily basis. Under these circumstances, each country is promoting the introduction of programming education for early age children, and software called a visual programming language that can be programmed using pictures and diagrams is being developed. This paper had proposed a method for measuring the educational effect when such visual programming was practiced for preschoolers. We had made evaluation data by observing children's programming practice, and we will discuss and evaluate the proposed method and how to utilize the acquired data.

The competition between Trillium spp. and other species could modify the utility of Trillium spp. as indicators of the impact of deer on forest vegetation. To evaluate whether Trillium spp. ( T. camschatcense and T. tschonoskii ) are appropriate indicators of the impact of sika deer ( Cervus nippon ) in the presence of dwarf bamboo ( Sasa senanensis ), which competes with Trillium populations, we examined the size class of large‐growth‐stage Trillium plants, the frequency of the presence of deer pellets and the coverage of S. senanensis in deer‐excluded sites (where deer have been eliminated since 1995) and unfenced control sites in A kan N ational P ark, eastern H okkaido, J apan. The result of a cumulative link mixed model ( CLMM ) suggests that size class at deer‐excluded sites is influenced by competitive understory species, even without deer grazing. The CLMM result for unfenced control sites suggests that C. nippon negatively influences the size class of Trillium populations; however, the negative effect weakened with increasing S. senanensis coverage. Thus, S. senanensis can function as an unpalatable neighbor that makes it difficult for C. nippon to detect Trillium plants. We conclude that the size class structure of Trillium spp. can be a useful index of C. nippon usage under sparse or medium S. senanensis understories; however, it is difficult to use these indices under dense S. senanensis understories because of the weakened negative effect of C. nippon grazing.

The effect of exposure to ozone on the frequency shift (ΔF) and pressure (P) of a quartz oscillator was observed to check its resistance against the gas. After every ozone exposure, the ΔF-P characteristic curves shifted toward lower frequencies, indicating that the oscillator lost its repeatability. The oscillator electrode consisted of an Au-Cr film deposited on a quartz substrate; an evaluation using a scanning electron microscope (SEM) showed that each film layer had a thickness of 65 nm. The surface composition of the electrode was analyzed by Auger electron spectroscopy (AES). The AES intensities of Cr and Au showed that Cr oxide was present on top of the Au film layer; we speculate that ozone exposure may proceed the Cr oxidation with higher atomic valence. AES depth analysis showed that a small amount of Cr was detected in the Au film layer; we believe that Cr oxidation could progress by either Cr diffusion through the Au layer or by O diffusion from the surface.