Long-term and wide geographic scale monitoring surveys are needed to detect signs of changes in ecosystems due to large-scale gradual environmental shifts, such as global warming. In 2003, Ministry of the Environment of Japan launched the Monitoring Sites 1000 Project, a nationwide long-term monitoring of various ecosystems which are now being carried out at more than 1000 sites. In a part of the Forest and Grassland survey of this project, censuses of biodiversity of indicator groups (tree, bird and ground-dwelling beetle) and carbon stocks (tree biomass, litter fall and soil organic matter) have been conducting every year or every 5 years in 49 forest sites covering subarctic to subtropical climate zones and the major forest types in Japan.

The data obtained so far revealed large-scale geographic patterns of biodiversity: species richness of trees and birds in winter were higher in the warmer sites whereas birds in summer and beetles showed opposite patterns. We found some signs suggesting species’ distribution shifts during the initial seven years. Spatiotemporal variation in leaf fall was clearly associated with inter-site and inter-annual variation in temperature. These findings provide useful implications for studies of biogeography, community and ecosystem ecology and biological conservation.