Diversity in Environmental Research

NIES conducts a range of unique research activities by making full use of the creativity of our researchers. For example, taking their work to the world's oldest lake, our researchers are investigating changes in the global environment that occurred over the past 30 million years. In other work they are confirming past changes in atmospheric pollution by using bark locked inside trees. In another project, they are taking simultaneous measurements in two countries of the yellow sand particles that cross the sea from China to Japan, and trying to determine the environmental impacts. Environmental problems of the twenty-first century require us to broaden our approaches in both the temporal and spatial scales. By tackling the global environment creatively and with diverse approaches, NIES is taking on the challenges of solving the increasingly complex environmental issues of this day.

Lake Baikal is the oldest lake in the world, with a history of 30 million years. At the same time, it is unique in the dramatic changes its climate has undergone over time, and many unique endemic species are found here. NIES is working to reconstruct the environmental changes over many millennia, using core samples from the lake sediment. Through this we have learned much about the impacts of environmental change on biotic life. For example, more than 10 million years ago during a general cooling period in the climate, the research indicates that after formation of the ice sheets, trees that had adapted to warmer climates died out, the pace of evolution of algae increased, and the life span of species decreased.

The largest core-drilling system set up on ice sheet at Lake Baikal
This equipment is able to extract a 1000 meter-long sediment core from a site where the water is 1000 meters deep.

Bark pockets in trees act as time capsules that capture and store atmospheric pollution from the past. Using this feature, NIES is conducting research to clarify the state of environmental pollution in the past, by analyzing pollutants such as heavy metals and acidic substances.

A three-year Japan-China joint project the study yellow sand (loess) that blows to Japan was launched in 2001. It aims to identify the sources of the yellow sand, establish a model to explain its atmospheric behavior, and to determine in scientific terms the environmental impacts in the northeast Asian region of increases and decreases in the amount of the yellow sand. Loess has a neutralizing effect on acid rain, and plays an important role as a source of nutrients related to the growth of plants and animals, but the dynamics of these functions are not yet fully understood.

NIES is using observational equipment that can measure atmospheric concentrations of particulate matter to observe the behavior of loess simultaneously in China and Japan, and is studying the altitude and amount of loess particles being transported in the air.

Lidar equipment set up at the Japan-China Friendship Center for Environmental Protection (Beijing). (Same equipment as the lidar system at NIES in Tsukuba, Japan)



Example of loess behavior observed simultaneously by lidar in Japan and China
Loess observed in Beijing on 5 March 2001 (red portion near ground level) drifted over Tsukuba (orangish color between 3 and 4 km altitude) in Japan on the next day. Other red portions in the image represent other loess events (orangish color indicates loess concentrations).

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