When green isn’t good: Mount Fuji’s reforestation linked to global warming

Study finds tree line has climbed up slope 30 metres and temperatures at peak have increased 2 degrees Celsius over several decades

Scientists attributed the change to climate change, warning about the implications for Japan’s flora and fauna

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Mount Fuji looms over Lake Kawaguchi, about 100km west of Tokyo. Photo: EPA-EFE

Published: 10:00am, 10 Jan 2021Updated: 10:12am, 10 Jan 2021

Greenery is inching up the previously grey and barren slopes of Japan’s Mount Fuji, with experts linking the gradual reforestation of the nation’s most iconic peak to global warming.

A study by Japanese scientists and published in the scientific journal Plants indicates that the tree line on Mount Fuji has climbed up the slope by as much as 30 metres in the last four decades. It also points out that larch trees that typically grow close to the ground and follow the contours of the windswept 3,776-metre peak are increasingly standing upright.

The scientific findings tally with the unseasonably late appearance of snow on the upper levels of the mountain, which stands about 100km west of Tokyo. Even in late December, observers were remarking that there was still no snow at the top of the peak – a sign that some took to mean that magma was rising within the volcano and that an eruption was possible.

A more likely explanation is that while parts of northern Japan are experiencing record snowfall this winter, temperatures in much of the rest of the country are above average and climate change is having an impact on Japanese flora and fauna.

The academic study, conducted by scientists from Niigata University’s Sado Island Centre for Ecological Sustainability and the biology department at Shizuoka University, concludes that in the 40 years from 1978, the timberline on Mount Fuji “advanced rapidly upwards and the degree of vegetation cover above the timberline increased remarkably”.

Temperatures at the timberline are at a high of 11.8 degrees Celsius (53 degrees Fahrenheit) in August and minus 9.5 degrees Celsius in February, the study found, with snow typically piling up to a depth of 30cm at the height of winter. Other studies have determined that the maximum temperature at the peak of Mount Fuji between June and September has risen by about 2 degrees Celsius in the last 50 years.

An aerial view of Mount Fuji. Photo: Neil Newman

The research focused on the foliage that is gaining a new hold on a stretch of the mountainside in the southeastern flank of the volcano at an altitude of 2,400 metres above sea level.

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