Mammal assemblages recorded by camera traps inside and outside the evacuation zone of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant accident
Citation
NIES Fukushima Terrestrial Ecosystem Monitoring Team (2022). Mammal assemblages recorded by camera traps inside and outside the evacuation zone of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant accident. Version 3.4. National Institute of Genetics, ROIS. Occurrence dataset https://doi.org/10.1007/s11284-016-1366-7 accessed via GBIF.org on 2023-05-30.Description
In 2011, the Fukushima Daiichi Power Plant accident resulted in the evacuation of about 81,000 people from the evacuation zone, which suffered from high levels of radioactive contamination. Large-scale and long-term land abandonment can cause changes in species assemblages. Despite the extensive global attention this incident received, open and spatially-explicit datasets of mammal fauna from Fukushima remain quite limited. We established a continuous monitoring protocol using camera traps for mammals both inside and outside the evacuation zone; this paper presents the dataset. These data represent the monitoring results from 45 camera traps from May 2014 to May 2016, including the location and actuation time of each camera, and the list of video records. After the publication of this initial data paper, we intend to continue monitoring until 2023 and the dataset will be hereafter updated with new observations.Sampling Description
Study Extent
The study area is the eastern part of Fukushima prefecture, located in northeastern Japan, and is enclosed within the following four sets of coordinates: (37.79275°N, 140.55635°E), (37.79275°N, 140.96821°E), (37.03656°N, 140.96821°E), and (37.03656°N, 140.55635°E) (Fig. 1). The study area contains the evacuation zone, which has been categorized since October 2013 into three subzones: a zone in preparation for the lifting of the evacuation order (≤20 mSv/year, Zone 1), a restricted residence area (20-50 mSv/year, Zone 2), and a difficult-to-return-to zone (>50 mSv/year, after 5 years, the air dose rate will still be >20 mSv/year, Zone 3). We set 46 monitoring sites inside and outside the evacuation zone (5 sites in Zone 1, 7 sites in Zone 2, and 13 sites in Zone 3). All the monitoring sites are located in closed forest.Sampling
A trail camera (Trophycam HD, Bushnell Outdoor Products) is installed at each monitoring site during May to August 2014. Cameras were adjusted to video mode, recording for 30 seconds with 10-second or more trigger interval. The image resolution was 1280×720 pixels (720p) and the frame rate was 30 fps in daytime mode (visible light imaging) and 18 fps in night-vision mode (infrared monochrome imaging). Cameras were fixed to tree trunks at a height of about 1 m. Data collection and battery exchange have been conducted biannually. In 2014, the data collection and battery exchange were conducted in October and partially in July. Mammals that appeared in the videos were identified and recorded to the event list. The duration between battery exchanges was defined as the “occasion”, and the start and end times of each occasion for each camera were recorded. The occasion values provide information on the durations for which the camera traps were active, and make it possible to calculate records per unit time. An occasion end time was defined as the time when the last video file was recorded, if a camera was inactive due to battery exhaustion or mechanical failure at the visit. The sensor cameras used in this study are essentially suitable tools for monitoring medium to large sized mammals (O'Brien et al. 2011). The capture efficiency of small mammals (e.g. rodents and shrews), can be highly sensitive to small variations in the installation of cameras, and we do not recommend treating the data on small mammals belonging to the orders Rodentia, Soricomorpha and Chiroptera as correlative indices of abundance.Quality Control
All species were identified by the authors or by research collaborators who are mammal experts. If we could not obtain sufficient information for species identification from a video image, we recorded a higher taxonomic level (e.g. order and class) which could be certainly specified. Scientific names followed Ohdachi et al. (Ohdachi et al. 2009) and the Catalogue of Life (http://www.catalogueoflife.org/). Since the camera traps were set at the same location, uncertainties of geographical coordinates were estimated to be smaller than 10m in which species could be recorded and identified.Method steps
- The R (R Core Team 2014) function for tabulating number of events and duration of camera in action by arbitrary intervals is available at Github (https://github.com/ecomoni-fukushima/Conversion-tools-for-camera-trapping-data-in-R).
Taxonomic Coverages
Geographic Coverages
Fukushima, Japan
Bibliographic Citations
- O'Brien T, Kinnaird MF, Wibisono HT (2011) Estimation of species richness of large vertebrates using camera traps: an example from an Indonesian rainforest. In: AF O'Connell, JD Nichols, KU Karanth (eds) Camera traps in animal ecology: methods and analyses. Springer, pp. 233-252 -
- Ohdachi SD, Ishibashi Y, Iwasa MA, Saito T (2009) The wild mammals of Japan. Shoukadoh Book Sellers, Kyoto -
- R Core Team (2014) R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria. URL: http://www.R-project.org/ (latest access: Aug. 13 2015) -
Contacts
NIES Fukushima Terrestrial Ecosystem Monitoring Teamoriginator
position: Researcher
National Institute for Environmental Studies
16-2 Onogawa
Tsukuba
305-8506
Ibaraki
JP
email: ecomoni_fukushima@nies.go.jp
NIES Fukushima Terrestrial Ecosystem Monitoring Team
metadata author
position: Researcher
National Institute for Environmental Studies
16-2 Onogawa
Tsukuba
305-8506
Ibaraki
JP
email: ecomoni_fukushima@nies.go.jp
Keita Fukasawa
author
position: Researcher
National Institute for Environmental Studies
16-2 Onogawa
Tsukuba
305-8506
Ibaraki
JP
Telephone: +8129-850-2676
email: fukasawa@nies.go.jp
Yoshio Mishima
author
position: Junior Research Associate
National Institute for Environmental Studies
16-2 Onogawa
Tsukuba
305-8506
Ibaraki
JP
Akira Yoshioka
author
position: Researcher
National Institute for Environmental Studies
16-2 Onogawa
Tsukuba
305-8506
Ibaraki
JP
Nao Kumada
author
position: Research Assistant
National Institute for Environmental Studies
16-2 Onogawa
Tsukuba
305-8506
Ibaraki
JP
Kumiko Totsu
author
position: Specialist (Database engineer)
National Institute for Environmental Studies
16-2 Onogawa
Tsukuba
305-8506
Ibaraki
JP
Telephone: +8129-850-2894
email: totsu.kumiko@nies.go.jp
Takeshi Osawa
author
position: Researcher
National Institute for Agro-Environmental Sciences
JP
NIES Fukushima Terrestrial Ecosystem Monitoring Team
administrative point of contact
position: Researcher
National Institute for Environmental Studies
16-2 Onogawa
Tsukuba
305-8506
Ibaraki
JP
email: ecomoni_fukushima@nies.go.jp
Biodiversity Division
administrative point of contact
National Institute for Environmental Studies
email: biodiv.data@nies.go.jp