From the Catchment to Coast in Japan: The Past, the Present, and the Future of Japanese Water Resources and Human Activities addresses seven broad questions relating to water resource management in Japan: What water reforms have occurred in Japan over the past 100 years? What is the current condition of Japan related to regional and rural communities, major water-related assets, and salinity and water quality? How have the water reforms to date influenced policy and management? How do traditional and modern water resources differ from Western countries? What challenges face Japan over the next and beyond 30 years, particularly due to climate change , and more.
Other questions answered include: What are possible policy and management responses to climate change and other future challenges? What can be done to improve decision-making processes given the general lack of trust in the governments, agencies, and their current processes? What is the way ahead for policy and management reforms in Japan , and much more.
1. The society and nature in Japan
2. Historical changes in Japan
3. Water, soils, and water resources the historical changes
4. Water resources, nutrient cycling, water quality problems
5. Recent and future environmental problems in Japan
6. New trend of Japanese river management
Takashi Asaeda s research field covers basic hydraulics/hydrology regarding stratified flows, bubble plumes, etc., urban atmosphere focusing on the mechanisms of urban heat islands, fish ecology particularly on Pseudorasbora parva, ecology/physiology of aquatic plants including field observation, modeling and managements, cyanobacteria blooming, and riparian vegetation. The results are published by more than 250 scientific papers. He is working as Editor-in-Chief of Wetlands Ecology and Management (Springer-Nature), Journal of Ecohydraulics (IAHR), Associate Editor of Aquatic Ecology (Springer-Nature), Journal of Hydro-Environmental Research (IAHR). Tetsunori Inoue has been studying oxygen, phosphorus, and nitrogen cycles in lakes and coastal areas, with a particular focus on early diagenetic processes at the water-sediment interface. He is also developing EcoPARI, a process-based model of lower- and higher-order ecosystems based on a three-dimensional non-hydrostatic model. His research is conducted using a wide range of techniques including field observations, laboratory experiments, chemical analysis, and numerical modelling. Tadanobu Nakayama has developed methods for assessing and predicting the changes in ecosystem functions by integrating ground-based observation, GIS data, satellite data, and distributed process models (NICE: National Integrated Catchment-based Eco-hydrology). NICE is a 3-D process-based model, which includes the interaction between surface water and groundwater and assimilates land-surface processes describing vegetation phenology with satellite data. The model is also coupled with sediment and nutrient transport model, with vegetation succession model, and with urban canopy model and regional atmospheric model, etc. The major topics are wetland ecosystem and nature restoration, global eco-hydrology, urban environment and water resources, and plastic cycles. Recently, he further developed an advanced model coupling eco-hydrology and biogeochemical cycle (NICE-BGC) to evaluate missing role of inland water on global biogeochemical cycle. This new model incorporates complex coupling of hydrologic-carbon cycle in terrestrial-aquatic linkages and interplay between inorganic and organic carbon during the whole process of carbon cycling. He is also editor of two journals; Ecohydrology published by Wiley, and Ecohydrology & Hydrobiology published by Elsevier. Ryuichiro Shinohara is a senior researcher of National Institute for Environmental Studies in Japan. He is working as an associate editor or an editor of international journals, Limnology and Landscape and Ecological Engineering. His major interest is to seek the controlling factor of aquatic environments, including physical, chemical, and biological aspects. He is now working on the effects of climate change on lake biogeochemistry.
