Abstract
Hummocky microforms (non-sorted patterned ground) occur extensively under seasonal frost environments, including Japanese high latitude and altitude regions. This paper focuses on vegetation contrasts between hummock apexes and interhummock depressions, and on its contribution to hummock formation in a representative hummock field in Japan. Vegetation cover in the study area serves to classify the hummocks into three types: covered with mire herbs, pasture weeds and forest-related species. The first type has a remarkable contrast in vegetation, characterized by entirely vegetated (sedged) apexes and bared inter-hummock depressions. Such uneven vegetation is likely to generate and/or develop these sedged hummocks associated with differential frost penetration (cryoturbation). The last two types lack sedges, but permit weed invasion on their inter-hummock depressions as well as hummock apexes. The last type, covered with a bamboo grass, is considered to be relict forms which indicate changes in hydrological environments induced by deepening groundwater.
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