Examination of snow damage occurring in artificial forests in Japan. Noguchi, T., Kobayashi, M., Tanaka, K. Plantations of Japanese cedar and Japanese cypress were promoted aggressively after World War II in Japan. However, many plantations have since been abandoned due to a long-term decline in timber prices, caused by high-volume imports of foreign lumber. Trees in abandoned plantations are spindly with non-uniform width of annual rings, causing weakness in tree trunks. This weakness increases the risk of weather-related damage such as wind and snow damage. Moreover, this weather-related damage has been increasing in line with global climate change in recent years. In fact, serious snow damage occurred in the central part of Kyoto Prefecture in January 2009. The results of topographical analysis by GIS showed that both the snow damage during calm conditions in 2009 and the wind damage caused by Typhoon 23 in 2004 occurred mainly on north-facing slopes. Annual ring analysis showed that the outer rings of snow-damaged trees were extraordinarily narrow. These results suggest that some trees surviving the wind damage caused by Typhoon 23 had cracked along their annual rings (ring shake), and trees weakened in this way then suffered snow damage due to the accretion of heavy snow on their crowns.