The Japanese Islands located along northwestern rim of the Circum-Pacific orogenic zone have been suffered from several kinds of natural disasters. Therefore, the researches on the mechanism and the predictions of natural disasters are the serious problems for Japanese.
The purpose of this symposium is to discuss the possibility of natural desaster predictions and of making the comprehensive hazard maps through the Quaternary studies.
The main parts of the symposium were composed of 8 presentations. They are 2 papers related to earthquake disaster, 2 to volcanic eruption, 1 to disaster with slope failure, 1 to measures against river mitigatton, and 2 to hazard map. Besides these 8 papers, 7 comments were also presented during the symposium. This special issue is, therefore, composed of 15 papers. These papers will show us the present status of Japanese Quaternary studies concerning to the natural disaster prediction.