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© 2025 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.

Abstract

Vegetation and subsequent ecosystem services can recover over time in forest headwaters devastated by massive disasters. However, in cold regions, their recovery rates are typically slow and often imperceptible, which makes it difficult to evaluate how much ecosystem services have recovered. This study targeted dissolved organic matter (DOM), which plays a central role in biogeochemical processes in forest ecosystems, and aimed to examine whether vegetation conditions affect the quality of stream DOM from cool-temperate forest headwaters in northern Japan. To achieve this, hydrological observations and stream water sampling were conducted monthly from May to December 2021 in three small forest catchments with different landslide coverage. Dissolved organic carbon (DOC) concentration in stream water was measured, and the molecular composition of DOM was analyzed using ultrahigh-resolution mass spectrometry and compared among the three catchments. The peak-intensity-weighted average aromaticity index (AIwa) increased with DOC concentration. We found that AIwa was the highest in the undisturbed catchment, followed by the catchments with landslide coverages of 16% and 52% at a given DOC level. These results indicate that the quality of DOM could dramatically change depending not only on DOC concentration but also on vegetation disturbance in cool-temperate forest headwaters.

Details

Title
Molecular Composition of Stream Dissolved Organic Matter in Cool-Temperate Forest Headwaters with Landslides, Northern Japan
Author
Jun’ichiro Ide 1   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Hara, Kenta 1 ; Arata, Yohei 2 ; Endo, Izuki 3 ; Ohashi, Mizue 4 ; Nishimura, Hiroshi 5 ; Gomi, Takashi 6 

 Department of Applied Chemistry and Bioscience, Chitose Institute of Science and Technology, Chitose 066-8655, Japan; [email protected] (K.H.); [email protected] (I.E.) 
 Forestry Research Institute, Hokkaido Research Organization, Bibai 079-0198, Japan; [email protected] 
 Department of Applied Chemistry and Bioscience, Chitose Institute of Science and Technology, Chitose 066-8655, Japan; [email protected] (K.H.); [email protected] (I.E.); School of Human Science and Environment, University of Hyogo, Himeji 670-0092, Japan; [email protected] 
 School of Human Science and Environment, University of Hyogo, Himeji 670-0092, Japan; [email protected] 
 Research Institute for Sustainable Humanosphere, Kyoto University, Kyoto 611-0011, Japan; [email protected] 
 Graduate School of Bioagricultural Sciences, Nagoya University, Nagoya 464-8601, Japan; [email protected] 
First page
63
Publication year
2025
Publication date
2025
Publisher
MDPI AG
e-ISSN
23065338
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
ProQuest document ID
3181478897
Copyright
© 2025 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.