宮脇 昭, Miyawaki Akira

The Miyawaki method of reconstitution of "indigenous forests by indigenous trees" produces a rich, dense and efficient protective pioneer forest in 20 to 30 years, where natural succession would need 200 years in temperate Japan and 300 to 500 years in the tropics. Success requires compliance with the following phases:

• Rigorous initial site survey and research of potential natural vegetation.
• Identification and collecting of a large number of various native seeds, locally or nearby and in a comparable geo-climatic context.
• Germination in a nursery (which requires a technique for some species, for example, those that germinate only after passing through the digestive tract of a certain animal, or that need a particular symbiotic fungus, or a cold-induced dorming phase, etc.).
• Preparation of the substrate if it is very degraded (addition of organic matter/mulch (for example with 3–4 kg of rice straw per square metre, to replace the protection afforded by surface humus and leaf litter) and (in areas with heavy or torrential rainfall) planting mounds for tap-root species that require a well-drained soil surface. Hill slopes can be planted with more ubiquitous surface roots species (cedar, Japanese cypress, pine, etc.)
• Plantation respecting biodiversity inspired by the model of the natural forest. Miyawaki implements and recommends unusually dense plantation of very young seedlings (but with an already mature root system: with symbiotic bacteria and fungi present), for example, 30 cm oaks from acorns, raised in a nursery over two years. Density aims at stirring competition between species and the onset of phytosociological relations close to what would happen in nature (30 to 50 plants per square metre in the temperate zone, up to 500 or even 1000 seedlings per square metre in Borneo);
• Plantations randomly distributed in space in the way plants are distributed in a clearing or at the edge of the natural forest, not in rows or staggered (meeting on this point with the Prosilva methods in Europe).

The results show that this method, if properly applied, quickly produces a multi-layered forest and according to him, a soil with a microbial and acari composition quickly approaching that of a normal primary forest. He has published dozens of books, treatises, and articles on his researches and results.