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Ecological impacts of the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake Tsunami on aquatic animals in rice paddies

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  • Freshwater biodiversity in human-dominated landscapes
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Abstract

The 2011 Tohoku Earthquake Tsunami hit the Pacific coast of eastern Japan on March 11, 2011 and disturbed various ecosystems, including rice paddies along the coast. In Miyagi Prefecture, located in the Tohoku Region, a total of 12685 ha, or about 11.5 % of the rice paddies, were inundated and damaged by the tsunami. Although rice paddies are artificially constructed, they have long been used by many kinds of aquatic animals as habitats. To assess impacts of the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake Tsunami on aquatic animals inhabiting the rice paddies, census surveys were conducted at inundated and non-inundated rice paddies at six sites along the coast of Miyagi Prefecture from June to July 2012. This was 30–60 days after the first transplanting of rice seedling in inundated rice paddies following the tsunami. In the surveys a total of 100 aquatic animal taxa, 72 from inundated and 86 from non-inundated rice paddies, were found. Although the taxonomic richness and composition differed among the sites, the total number of observations of walk dispersers and obligatory aquatic animals without resting stages were significantly lower in inundated than in non-inundated rice paddies. However, no notable difference was detected in taxonomic richness and the total number of observations of flight dispersers and obligatory aquatic animals with resting stages between inundated and non-inundated rice paddies. The results showed that the tsunami had a substantial impact on freshwater animals but that restoration of the paddies for rice cultivation enhanced rapid recolonization by aquatic animals with high dispersal abilities and resting stages.

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Acknowledgments

This study was financially supported by Mitsui & Co., Ltd. Environment Fund (F11-F1-020), Earthwatch Japan, and a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research B (No. 25291094) from the MEXT Japan to JU. We thank Shigeo Yasuda, Yukiho Ito, and participants of the citizen research program by Earthwatch Japan. We are grateful to the farmers who allowed us to investigate their paddies.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Graduate School of Life Sciences, Tohoku University, Aoba 6-3, Aramaki, Aoba-ku, Sendai, Miyagi, 980-8578, Japan

    Yasuo Mukai, Tomoyo Suzuki, Wataru Makino, Mika So & Jotaro Urabe

  2. Undergraduate School of Life Sciences, Toyo University, Izumino 1-1-1, Itakura-machi, Ora-gun, Gunma, 374-0193, Japan

    Tsubasa Iwabuchi

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  1. Yasuo Mukai
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  6. Jotaro Urabe
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Correspondence to Yasuo Mukai.

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Handling Editor: Nisikawa Usio

Appendix

Appendix

See Table 5 and Fig. 6.

Table 5 List of animal taxa recorded in this study with the total number of observations in the paddies inundated and non-inundated by the tsunami
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Fig. 6
figure 6

Ordination of study sites using principal component analysis (PCA) of land use and land cover within a 2000-m radius of the sites. Land cover and land use data were obtained from GIS dataset provided by the Ministry of the Environment of Japan and arcsine square root transformed before PCA analysis. Subscript “i” and “n” denote inundated and non-inundated paddies, respectively

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Mukai, Y., Suzuki, T., Makino, W. et al. Ecological impacts of the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake Tsunami on aquatic animals in rice paddies. Limnology 15, 201–211 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10201-014-0432-5

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