Biodiversity Restoration Along the Tsurumi River

   After the harshly hot summer days from mid-July to late August, we experienced two large typhoons here in this part of Japan.

  First was strongly windy one in September. Second one, in December, was a historically large and strong typhoon with an unprecedented heavy rain causing nearly one hundred casualties over the central and northern part of Japan.

 Both attacked the Tsurumi River Basin. Our field, the lower segment of the Tsurumi-river Tsunashima Riverside Green Belt, was washed by a large flood. But , luckily enough, the flood washed away significant amount of climbing plants, including vicious foreign species Cycious angulata , leaving Oghi grass virtually intact.

 Thisincident , also with our effort to remove large amount of flood trash covering the field after the flood, markedly enhanced the autumn growth of  Oghi, the target species to be restored in this place.

  Now our Oghi community is in full autumn bloom for a distance ofca. 50m that has been and is going to be under our intensive work of restoration. The autumn riverside scene beautifully fringed by silver ears of Oghi is attracting citizens, as also expected, spending recreational time at this riverside area.

 The current state of restoration of the Oghi community is roughly assessed as some about 70% in area. In fact, the well restored Oghi, also still rather slender, constitutes a continuous community over the distance of 50m riverside area under recovery work.

This is a remarkable attainment far better than expected last year. During the winter, Oghi plants will vigorously extend underground root system and in the next spring we can expect new shoots coming out all over the vacant space for their space, causing the width of the community significantly wider than now.

We hope we will see a fully restored Oghi community, in its length and also in width, covering the current riverside restoration area of ca. 1/4 ha.

From the next spring we will extend restoration area upward for a distance of another 50m.

We hope we could get continued support from all of you. Thank you.