Yuichi Niwa - Appointed in AY2021

My specialty is physical geography. The Nobi Plain, one of Japan's most prominent alluvial plains, extends from western Aichi Prefecture to southwestern Gifu Prefecture and northeastern Mie Prefecture. Born in Aichi Prefecture, I lived on this plain until I became a university student. In high school geography, I learned that alluvial plains are formed through river floods and storm surges. In my daily life, I was fascinated by the contrast between the distant mountains and the plain where I lived. These experiences sparked a desire to study the formation of familiar landscapes from a geographical perspective. Since entering university, I have been researching the formation process of alluvial plains, the environmental changes inferred from them, and crustal movements in the field of physical geography.

The true pleasure of this research is being able to decipher various environmental changes that have occurred over periods longer than a human lifetime by exploring how familiar landscapes were formed. Alluvial plains are familiar landscapes where populations and infrastructure are concentrated. Despite their familiarity, a close look at topographic maps and aerial photographs allows us to interpret micro-topography that records the history of past floods. At the boundary between mountains and plains, one can sometimes find displaced landforms caused by active faults (evidence of major earthquakes). By collecting and analyzing the sediments that make up the plain, we can decipher environmental shifts from land to sea (or sea to land), sediments formed during floods, and topographical changes corresponding to seismic crustal movements. Furthermore, studying the formation of alluvial plains is also about deciphering the history of disasters, which is crucial for considering disaster prevention and mitigation.

Your time as a student is a precious period for broad learning. I encourage you to take courses in various fields and expose yourself to diverse ways of understanding things. In the physical geography courses I teach, I emphasize the perspective of understanding phenomena across diverse spatiotemporal scales. For example, to understand how a familiar landscape was formed, you need to know its relationship with global-scale environmental changes. When considering disaster prevention and mitigation for earthquakes and floods, it's necessary to look beyond the last few decades of observational records and grasp the related natural phenomena over periods longer than a human lifetime to consider the current state and future of disaster-causing natural events. My classes include not only lectures but also hands-on activities like interpreting topographic maps and aerial photographs of familiar areas, so I hope you will enjoy learning.

(Interviewed in January 2022)