Coastal Zones

Biography

Biography: Prof KOGURE Kazuhiro

Abstract

Japan is a country with frequent earthquakes, approximately, every 5 minutes somewhere in the country. Although it’s not regularly, big tsunami hits coastal area of Japan, approximately, every 20-30 years. Most of them are due to the earthquake occured in Japan, while some are from other countries, like Chilie. On March 11, 2011, the Great East Japan Earthquake hit northern part of Japan, followed by huge tsunami in Tohoku area. Although there have been many reports on the damages to human societies and terrestrial environments, limited information is available for marine ecosystems. For instance, what kind of damages the earthquake and tsunami caused in coastal environments? Any vulnerable environments? Are they recovering? How did it affect bioresources in the area? Because off Tohoku area is one of the three major fishing areas in the world, understandings of effects of the earthquake and tsunami, and ecological processes to make the area productive is important. In order to answer these questions, Tohoku Ecosystem-Associated Marine Sciences (TEAMS) was launched in January 2012 supported by MEXT. Since then, intensive research have been conducted by more than 200 scientists including physics, chemistry, biology, geology, modeling and so on. A part of scientific findings and also its siginificance to the restoration of fisheries will be shown and discussed. We believe, there has been no case of such an intensive and multi disciplinary investigations right after big natural disturbances. Therefore, this can be an importan model for organizing scientific teams for possible future disasters.