PRACTICABILITY ON "PLANT COMMUNITY CLUSTER" WHICH IS SPATIAL UNIT FOR RIPARIAN VEGETATION MANAGEMENT IN CHIKUMA RIVER

This study aimed to evaluate the practicability of Plant Community Cluster (PCC), a new spatial unit proposed for riparian vegetation management in our previous study. To verify the PCC, we conducted the demonstration experiment on ability of the PCC in the Chikuma River. First, we examined the PCC could extract the plant community boundaries pointed by the plant ecologist and river engineer. Second, we examined the PCC abstract trend of surface substrate material change. In the results, we clarify the following that; (i) boundaries extracted by the PCC were almost coincided with boundaries of landscapes classified by two river engineers, (ii) PCC had the correlation to trends of surface substrate material change. This result indicated that PCC have the practicability for the riparian vegetation management, and possibility to clarify the mechanism of vegetation dynamics in the river.