Summary Report
APBON 6th Web Seminar

1. Date: 25th February, 2021
Time: 15:00-17:00 in Japanese Standard Time (UTC 06:00-08:00am)(12:45-14:45 in Nepal; 13:00-15:00 in Cambodia; 2/24 20:00-22:00 in Hawaii)(14:00-16:00 in Malaysia, Philippines, China)
2. Location, Participants
・Webex Meeting Room・25 participants (21 participants and 4 from secretariat) from 8 Nationalities
・MC: Dr. Bunthang Touch(IFReDI: Inland Fisheries Research and Development Institute)
3. Program:Opening and Announcement:
Secretariat of APBON (Mr. Saito: Biodiversity Center of Japan)
・welcomed all of the participants to join this 6th APBON web seminar
・The agenda and rules of meeting were proposed
・Introduced today’s MC
Presentation1:
Dr. Eun-Shik Kim (Kookmin University)“Ecological observation of the declining Korean fir forest on the higher altitude area ofMt. Hallasan National Park, Jeju Island, Korea, under changing climate aided by theICT (information and communications technology)”
Q&A Session
Q: I was very happy to work with you over the last years. I’m particularly interested inyour work in Mt. Hallasan on Korean fir, because fir tree is very popular in Kyusyu.
And we also observed that young seedlings are quite infrequent, there are moresaplings. Saplings are usually 30 centimeter tall, but sometimes the age was very old.
So sometimes one meter sapling has 50 years old age. So it seems that we have thesimilar situation between Japan and Korea. And I’m interested in how high or low
survivorship of saplings are(not seedlings). Could you explain the situation in Korea
fir?
A: Yes, as in my slide that I showed you about the gap of seedlings and saplings, it’squite interesting to see that we examined the seedlings under the dwarf bamboo
population. When they are in about the height of 10 centimeters, they are about 10years old already. Fir is a shade-tolerant tree species, so they're very slow in growthwhen seedlings. So I think that what you said is correct and common to see. Thesaplings with 1 meter in height could be 50 years old. What I observed from Mt.
Hallasan is that seedlings and saplings are being browsed by the roe deer so that wehave the gap in the saplings, too. So it would be kind of the worries for us to see theforests without the saplings, meanwhile the old trees will be fallen down due to thestrong typhoons. But the regeneration and succession interrupted is the big issue inthe forest. So the major issue related to the regeneration might be the deer browsingof the seedling and saplings you might be able to see, and it’s quite common to seefrom the Mt. Hallasan in Jeju Island.
Q: You’ve succeeded in continuing observation since 2015 and how you expect how long
can you continue this observation? Do you have any good system for ensuring thelongtime observation in Korea?
A: This is an excellent question. This is the pilot platform that we made with which I
managed it until July last year. Last year, we transferred it to the National Park
Research Institute as I mentioned before. So we are hoping that they continue tomonitor with it at the site on Mt. Hallasan as long as possible and that they haveother monitoring systems applied to other National Parks sites as with the agreement
made. So I think that I handed it to the good hands of the National Parks in Korea.
While hoping that the Institute could successfully get the funds for the managementfrom the government, I think that they will be promoted further with the sites in theNational Parks of Korea. That is also my hope.
Comment: We have the same problem with native forest regeneration in Hawaii.
Saplings can’t grow well due to invasive grass covers or get eaten by wildlife whensuccessful.
A: When I showed you the slide about the dwarf bamboo, the seedlings are being
suppressed. As dwarf bamboo belongs to the grass family, I think it also happens inthe other areas of the world. Now they are not being browsed by horses and cows, but
in the past they were browsed by horses and cows. On Mt. Hallasan, they arecarrying out a test or experiment of grazing pressure on the vegetation with the cows
and horses.
Q: Thank you for your successful presentation and congratulations to your progress in
the last decades and also impressive pictures which was very impressive for me to see
the beginning of the APBON and also the very early history of LTER in our region. So
my question is I heard that you have already transferred your system to National
Park but do you have any other additional idea to share this kind of system with theKorea LTER community?
A: Actually my motivation is to continue this work as a long-term study. I think that if
the National Park Research Institute agrees with further sharing data from thesystem, that will be one of the outputs in Korea LTER activities. So one thing very
important is if they are successful for getting funded for further these activities, I
think this is the way for us to go for the activities of KBON as well as KLTER. A goodquestion to think about!
Q: Because I remember that in the last couple of years, the APBON has been discussing
observation items that are biodiversity issues and also ecological issues. And we’vebeen discussed that the phenology could be one of your phenology observations. And
also considering that they including someone physiological experts of trees tochanging environments, in that way, this could be a very good reaching items for thedifferent networks. If we could develop more in Korea and also in Japan and in theother countries in our region, we could promote this observation to see what ishappening in their ecosystem from the local scale. So this study could be a kind ofmodel to a promote suggestions.
A: Yes, when we observe the phenology of trees or forests, that can be seen from outside.
As this study shows another aspect of tree phenology related to tree growth frominside, I think this could be a different perspective of phenology of trees or forest tothink about.
Presentaton2:
Dr. Tomoaki Miura (University of Hawaii, JAMSTEC)

“Exploring New Remote Sensing Data for the Characterization of Tropical Phenology”
Q&A Session
Q: Thank you very much, I learned a lot from your recent progress using the very

compliant scale satellite imagery most in time and also in the space. This isvery interesting to apply to diversity observations from the satellite. So I have
one question from your perspective, what is your very recent emerging idea toconsider some master-sites on biodiversity observation crops from the viewpointof the satellite of the observations. I am asking this because I also know it is notthat easy to answer, but if you have the view from space, satellite could
measure and pick up some sensitive local areas or ecosystems that somethingchanging along the time, and that could be a very good viewpoint to set theobservation procedure field .
A: Yes, I think so. At this point, I'm also learning about it, so I don't have any

specific suggestion on a good monitoring site. I happened to be introduced tothis Lambir Hills National Park, so I work with Dr. Shin Nagai and otherco-workers to try to see the utility of these data. But I think it could be a goodidea to also try to see how useful satellite data are to other sites where theintensive field, so you can see how satellite images co-relate with the in situ
observation and once you are able to establish a good connectivity then you canspecially expand the finding to much larger area. And then if you want to coverlarge area, probably you will need to have a filed validation observation to
occasionally check satellite observations. But we are seeing that these highresolution satellite data may be a good means more like taking photographs ofthe scenery from the satellite.
Q: Because in the last APBON workshop in January, we started to discuss about themaster site concept, designing and picking up some existing research approachso that APBON could go further with this primary idea, and then you and Dr.
Nagai could also work together to see how this process can be observed by thesatellites and the temporal cities or some other potential interpolation shipsurrounding area and targeting it. Then we might see how focusing area could
be influenced by changing environment or others surrounding circumstance.
A: That would be really great. We would be great to have the filed observations andsome time lapse camera and then satellite time series data at the high spatialresolution. So that would be good.
Q: Thank you so much for sharing cutting-edge research. One technical question

from me is, would the color of the flowers be a matter to detect the flowering
intensity from the satellite?
A: Yes, flower color seems to matter and so far we are confident that we can detect

white flowers very well, but we are not confident that we can see yellow flowers.
So the conclusion is for the white flowers, we are confident that we can see fromsatellite image but for yellow flowers, it’s seemingly easy to see with our eyes but
we don't think we can see yellow flowers very well from satellite.
Q: Thank you very much and I am just wondering if you could use the hyperspectral,or something like that, maybe you could detect more color variation in thefuture.
A: It's possible. I think it’s more to do with the spatial resolution, maybe we need afiner spatial resolution to detect a variety of colors of flowers and also based on
my experiences, overcast cloudy conditions seems to be better for detecting
flower colors. That goes against remote sensing from satellite remote sensing,here we need a clear sky condition, but for observing the flower colors, picturesof colors appears more nicely on cloudy conditions.
Q: Yes, it also happens in drone photo in the cloudy condition.
A: Yes, if you want to detect the flowers only. But if it’s overcasting and clouds are sothick, the scenery is darker which is not good. It's bright but the overcast withno shadow condition then you can get the really clear scenes that all the flowers
should stick out on the image very nicely.
Information exchange on APBON: (Dr. Muraoka)
Announcement:(1) 13th AOGEO Symposium (Dr. Hiroyuki Muraoka)‣The schedule of 13th AOGEO Symposium (March3-5 2021 online) was introduced andhe welcomed all of the members to participate. https://aogeo.net/2021/index.html‣The theme, topics of discussion and schedule of 13th AOGEO Symposium were briefly
introduced.
‣The deadline of registration is Feb 26.
‣APBON will give a short 5minutes presentation in AOGEO Task Group 2.
-Steering Committee is drafting the text inputs to be considered for the AOGEO

statement to be adopted in the final session of symposium and this AOGEO statement
will be delivered to the AOGEO principle of the region, and also will be delivered tothe entire community of the global team.
(2) APBON new Logo (Dr. Hiroyuki Muraoka)‣Dr. Muraoka said the new Logo which is designed by Dr. Yayoi Takeuchi, has been usedsince Canberra AOGEO symposium, and now another type of APBON logo will beused which you can see from APBON website. The meaning of using new logo is also
because we are transferring to the second decade of APBON.
‣Dr. Yayoi briefly introduced the concept of new logo, and hoped all of members could
expend their networks with this logo.
‣Original copy of this new logo will be available from APBON secretariat.
(3) Questionnaire to APBON members (Secretariat to APBON)‣Secretariat asked all of the participants to contribute to the questionnaire. It wasprepared to better prepare and organize APBON Web Seminar for the next fiscal year,April 2021 to March 2022.
‣The information of questionnaire will be sent to all of the members by mailing list.
Photo session: