For a long time on the Musashino Upland, on the western part of the Kanto Plain, people planted trees around residences and thus maintained windbreak forests. However, since the 1950s, these forests have been cut down owing to urban development and the forest area has gradually decreased. Consequently, forests have lost their original role as windbreaks. Despite such circumstances, a well-developed windbreak forest planted in 1929 is still growing at the Kodaira Campus of Tsuda University. This study outlines the natural and cultural backgrounds of tree planting design for the windbreak forest at the University and, through the analysis of historical resources and archives, it demonstrates how the forest was planted at the site. The results suggest that saplings of approximately 3 m or more in height may have been used for planting this windbreak forest. In the early stage of forest growth, the main component species of the forest was pine tree and although this seems to have dominated until the 1950s, in the 1960s broad-leaved trees( i.e., Japanese white oak)seem to have become the dominant species at the site. These findings reveal that the tree planting design for the windbreak forest at the Kodaira Campus, is characterized by a distinct idea based on the perspective of long-term planning to develop the forest and increase its functions for environmental conservation in the future.
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