Published papers

This study attempts to find out the regional memory and image shared by residents before the Great East Japan Earthquake of March 11, 2011. Oral histories were obtained by conducting interviews in a small community of Moune in Kesennuma City, Miyagi Prefecture from March through December, 2012. Two analyses, the correspondence analysis based on text mining and the spatial analysis using GIS, were applied to the oral histories of seventeen residents. The regional image and memory before the earthquake were thus extracted, which help local residents to plan and implement community-based reconstruction.

A predictive distributional model of Asiatic black bears (Ursus thibetanus japonicus) is useful for the effective management of the species' habitat. Applicability of a previously developed model to the Tanzawa local bear population was examined. Three different types of animal presence data were collected for validation of the model. The overall rate of correct classification was 67%?85%, indicating that the model can be extrapolated to other local populations with acceptable transferability. Accuracy of the model's predictions differed depending on the data sampling design most likely as a result of bias in one of the sampling methods. The model tended to underestimate the actual presence of bears. We attribute this underestimation to 1) properties of the particular habitat used by the local Tanzawa population and 2) the model's greater ability to predict the habitat of mountain bears than that of Satoyama bears.

Habitat estimation of Asiatic black bear is considered highly significant from the perspective of effective habitat management, because this species is known both as a destructive animal as well as an umbrella species. In this study, we developed a predictive model for the probability of occurrences of Asiatic black bear using environmental indices. Based on this research, the optimal logistic regression model was log(p/(1-p))=(-1.486e+01)+(7.335e-04)*x1+(9.470e-03)*x2. where x1 is the distance to small paths (m), x2 is the altitude (m), and p is a probability of occurrence of Asiatic black bear in this study area. This model is applicable for habitat management. Additional research will examine the application of this model to different local Asiatic black bear populations in other regions.

2015年は，本論で扱う農村地域，グリーンインフラストラクチャー(以下グリーンインフラ)，そして生態系を基盤とした災害リスクの低減(Ecosystem-based Disaster Risk Reduction; 以下Eco-DRR)というキーワードにとって，特筆すべき年になった。まず，新たな国土形成計画(全国計画)，国土利用計画(全国計画)，社会資本整備重点計画が2015年8月に閣議決定された。農村計画学会としては，特別委員会を2014年に設置し，国土形成計画(全国計画)の改定に向けて，パブリックコメントの提出，シンポジウムの開催などを行い，農村計画分野からの意見の表明を行った。この3つの計画では，グリーンインフラがたびたび取り上げられ，初めてグリーンインフラが日本の国土に関わる計画に記載された。時期は前後するが，2015年3月に第3回国連防災世界会議が仙台市で開催され，仙台防災枠組2015-2030の優先行動3の中にEco-DRRへの取り組みの推進が明示的に書き込まれた。加えて，2015年11月に閣議決定される予定の気候変動の影響への適応計画の案には，気候変動により高まることが予想される災害リスクに対し，工学的・生態学的手法，土地利用，社会的・制度的手法等の様々な手法を適切に組み合わせることの必要性が示され，Eco-DRRが国レベルの計画に位置づけられることになる。日本にとって2015年は，グリーンインフラ，Eco-DRR元年と言っても良いだろう。

The shift from automobile-oriented cities to walkable, people-centered cities is underway around the world. In the early 2000s, the Walkable Index was proposed, and many studies have been conducted on the walkability of cities. Many studies have proven that walking has various effects on human health. Increasingly severe global environmental problems and the spread of COVID-19 since the end of 2019 are pushing this urban transformation forward rapidly, moving us toward the construction of integrated sustainable cities on a human scale, such as 15-minute cities. I would like to give an overview of what kind of debate has been going on in the world from the end of the 1990s to the present from the perspective of walking.

The bird distribution was analyzed in the urban area of Nishinomiya City, Hyogo Prefecture, in order to develop evaluation methods of habitat suitability for ecological network planning. Bird communities were censused by point count method in twenty urban parks from December 1999 to February 2000. Based on the species composition of bird, twenty urban park were classified into four types by TWINSPAN (Two Ways INdicator SPecies ANalysis). The result of classification and regression trees showed that area of woods within urban park, ratio of woods within 500 m around urban park and vegetation cover density in shrub and herb layers (from 0.12 to 3 m) and tree layer (more than 9 m).

Biomass is a renewable energy source that is produced from living or recently living biological material. Vegetation type and biomass are considered important components that affect biosphere-atmosphere interactions. The ground assessment of biomass, however, has been found to be insufficient due to the limited spatial extent of surveys. This study aims to integrate field measurements with satellite remote sensing data for regional biomass mapping in Fujiyoshida City, Japan. Fujiyoshida City is situated on the northern slope of Mt. Fuji and includes a large area of forest land, named "Onshirin Forest". From 2011 to 2012, a field survey was conducted to calculate the biomass potential in situ as ground-truthed data. After fieldwork, ortho-rectified ALOS data with an AVNIR-2 scene (22 May 2008) was used to map the vegetation cover types. Japanese larch, Japanese red pine, mixed forest, other forest, grass, bare soil and roads, and buildings were identified using supervised classification. The total plant biomass was 163,252 tons. The biomass potential estimate from field measurements was extrapolated to the large forest area in Fujiyoshida City to estimate the potential plant biomass of specific vegetation cover types.

Urbanization has caused countless changes in the lives, behaviors, and community structures of wild animals. Habitat loss in urban areas has led to the proliferation of certain species over others; in the case of birds, frugivores and certain predators can be found in abundance in cities. These birds, however, occasionally show novel behaviors that can cause stress within human-wildlife interactions. The black kite, Milvus migrans, for example, has displayed a tendency to attack humans for their food in certain urban areas in Japan. In order to determine how habitat availability and land-use types affected these aggressive tendencies, field observations were combined with GIS analysis of five locations along Sagami Bay in Japan. The following locations were assessed according to the amount of each land-use type present and the aggressive tendencies of each location's black kite population: Enoshima, Fujisawa; Kamakura Beach, Kamakura; Zushi Beach, Zushi; Oiso Beach, Oiso; and Iwa Beach, Manazuru. The aggression of each population, designated by the log of the aggression index, was found to be significantly affected by the amount of forest area per black kite, the amount of non-rice-paddy agricultural area per black kite, and the season. Thus, aggression was higher amongst populations with less forested or agricultural area within their foraging zones, and aggression increased during spring, which is the breeding season.

On March 11, 2011 a massive, magnitude 9.0 earthquake destroyed most of the rural areas along the Pacific Coast of eastern Japan, an area that had been facing issues of depopulation and aging even before the earthquake. In this paper I discuss reconstruction plans for depopulated rural areas from the perspectives of transportation infrastructure, residential areas, agriculture, forestry, fisheries, consensus building, and nature restoration. We must take a "backcasting" approach to sustainable development, one in which planning strategies lead to successful outcomes. An organizational and planning support platform is needed to build a consensus within an area. © 2012 International Association of Traffic and Safety Sciences.

Physical and cultural conditions are fundamental factors in creating the formation of a terraced agricultural landscape. Studying the formation of terraced landscape is essential in order to understand the interaction between human activities and the natural processes that can be used to strengthen the adaptive capability in response to climate change and environment control. Terraced agricultural landscape in Batukaru Mountain's slope was selected as one of major terraced rice landscapes in Bali. The spatial pattern distribution and characteristics of landscapes were investigated using geographical information system, and the indigenous knowledge mechanism behinds the sustainability was discussed physically and culturally. The results showed that the harmony between the vertical pattern of the landscape, shape of terrace, irrigation system and conservative vegetative landscape along the steep slope and high elevation has protected the landscape. The controlled irrigation system has assured water to flow from the top to the bottom and even to places that seem impossible to reach by natural river water. The intangible agricultural indigenous concept called Tri Hita Karana was adhered to in organizing the layout of landscape elements such as forest, temple, terraced paddy field, irrigation network, and settlement which will continue to affect the sustainability throughout years. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.

We examined the diet of young Northern Goshawks Accipiter gentilis before and after fledging through the direct observation of prey items delivered by a single pair breeding in central Tokyo. Observations were conducted from 13 May to 14 August 2015. Three hundred prey items primarily belonging to five bird species and two genera of mammals were recorded both before and after fledging. The species contributing most to the total diet were White-cheeked Starling Spodiopsar cineraceus and Feral Pigeon Columba livia, with pigeons contributing most to total biomass followed by White-cheeked Starling. Prey item composition differed between the periods before and after fledging. After fledging, the contribution of White-cheeked Starling to the diet decreased, whereas that of pigeon increased.