In the tsunami-affected areas of the Great East Japan Earthquake, collective relocations were carried out amid the progressing aging of residents and changes in household composition. To promote inclusive recovery where no one is left behind, it is necessary to pursue reconstruction that both ensures the safety and livability of residents. However, there is a possibility that the convenience of daily life was compromised in the process of collective relocation. This study examined how the daily lives of participants in collective relocations in Kesennuma City changed before and after the disaster through a questionnaire survey. As a result, the following findings were observed. First, in disaster public housing, satisfaction with distance to grocery store and hospital visits was low. Second, in government-led-type relocations, satisfaction with safety was low but distance to grocery store and hospital visits was high. Third, in council-type, satisfaction with safety was high, but convenience of daily life was low.

In recent years, "pet tourism", a form of travel in which people travel with their pets, has been attracting attention. In this study, we investigated the development process of dog tourism in Karuizawa Town, and Izu Kogen area, where pet tourism has been promoted from the early stage. As a result, it was clarified that pet tourism was triggered by the establishment of "pet friendly hotel" through the goodwill of pension owners in the "pioneer period", and that in the subsequent "preparatory phase", service area development was promoted with the increase in car travel for tourists with dogs. Next, in the "establishment phase," pet tourism began to develop into community development by organizations. Finally, in the "development phase," pet tourism expanded to include collaboration with businesses and promotional activities outside the region.

China launched a national desert park system in 2013, aiming not only to protect the precious flora, fauna, and landscapes of desert ecosystems, but also to utilize those flora, fauna, and landscapes as resources for education and tourism. However, ecological and socioeconomic effects of the national desert parks are not yet well understood. The objective of this study was to use the Baogutu National Desert Park as a case study to clarify impacts on the livelihoods of local people living in the vicinity (through interviews) and impacts on vegetation restoration (using time-series analysis with five Landsat images from 2010 through 2022). We found that establishment of the park had impacts on residents that were both positive (e.g., improving living convenience and diversifying their livelihoods), and negative (e.g., significantly reducing the income of people who were subject to land-use restrictions by the park). In particular, people suffering from land-use restrictions tended to look at the negative aspects of the park and complained about the lack of opportunities to discuss concerns with park authorities. Although the vegetation environment in the park improved at first, the effects were not sustained, and vegetation eventually deteriorated even in some protection zones of the park. Future park management issues include the creation of a mechanism to incorporate the voices of local residents into management, and stricter zoning management.

Cultural ecosystem services play an important role in nature-based tourism, which has seen increasing demand in recent years. They are generally more difficult to quantify than other types of ecosystem services, however, and there has been little research on the cultural values of wildlife in particular. The objective of this study was to quantify cultural ecosystem services related to wildlife observation in five national parks in Japan using geotagged wildlife photos posted on Twitter (now known as “X”). More specifically, we aimed to identify the characteristics of areas where wildlife can serve as a source of cultural services, by constructing a spatial model that explains the number of wildlife photos that could be taken under various environmental conditions. We found that wildlife photos on Twitter were more likely to be taken in areas where both species richness and human accessibility were high. This result indicates that both habitat conservation (i.e., supply side of services) and recreation promotion (i.e., beneficiary side of services) are required to increase wildliferelated cultural services, implying the importance of balance between regulation and development in protected areas.

The Okinawa rail (Hypotaenidia okinawae), an endangered species that inhabits the northern part of Okinawa Island, has about 30 roadkill incidents per year, and various hardware measures are currently being taken to prevent roadkill, including the installation of “kuina fence”. On the other hand, as a convenient way to prevent roadkill, drivers turn on their headlights while driving, which is expected to help the Okinawa rail notice approaching vehicles and prevent them from jumping out. In this study, we drove along Okinawa prefectural road No. 2 during the time of day when Okinawa rail appear using halogen lights and LED lights with high beam, low beam, and no lights, and compared and analyzed the appearance rate of Okinawa rail. As the result, the lowest appearance rate was when the high beam of halogen lights was turned on, the next lowest rate of occurrence of Okinawa rail was observed when the high beam of LED lights was turned on. Therefore, it was shown that high beams could prevent roadkill of Okinawa rail.

In this study, multiple regression analyses on food sales were made by statistical and machine learning models for the shops at the Kitakata Campus and the Hibikino Campus of the University of Kitakyushu. We aim to establish a prediction model of sale amount that contributes to the improvement and reduction of food loss. The data on daily sale amounts of foods with short expiration dates (bread, boxed lunches, and rice balls) from November 2021 to November 2022 were provided by University Corporation shops. Through analysis, we found that there was a good correlation between the daily sale amounts of food and four factors e.g., yearly-averaged daily sales by weekday, sale amounts on the same day of last week, attending school or not, and weather conditions. Moreover, we developed a detailed future prediction model using multiple regression analysis and machine learning techniques and validated their accuracies by using the indicator of Root Mean Square Error. After comparison, we found that the predictions for two campuses made by the machine learning-based models were a little weaker than those made by multiple linear regression in this case, which was caused by the relatively small data volume. Moreover, it was demonstrated that the optimal feature (factor) selection rather than the number of features was essential for improving the prediction accuracy.

In the Higashiura Natural Environmental Study Forest in Aichi Prefecture, the Municipality of Higashiura and a volunteer group of citizens have collaborated in the management of the satoyama. Recently, it has become difficult to conduct adequate management of the bamboo forests due to the aging of the members of the volunteer group and the decreasing number of participants in the activities. The objective of this study is to propose optimal bamboo forest management for sustainable activities in the Forest. Thus, we compared three new scenarios constructed with the current status based on examining the necessary work content, the current labor force derived from qualitative interviews with relevant actors and the quantitative data of actual work results. The results showed that in the scenario of bamboo clear cutting except some areas that the citizens and foxes need and conversion to broadleaf forest management, the burden of bamboo forest maintenance can be reduced after 10 years despite a temporary increase in workload. Furthermore, by feedback to the Municipality of Higashiura and the volunteer group, the significance of examining the content of activities based on the visualization of labor based on data was confirmed, even in the case of activities by citizens, where the amount of work tends to be vague, suggesting that this survey method could be applied to other cases where bamboo forest management in satoyama conducted by citizens.

In ESD, which is a human resource development for improving the sustainability of society, "visualization" of regional environmental information is necessary in the creation of teaching materials and other content. In this paper, we summarize the roles and definitions of "visualization" and propose a classification structure consisting of four fields: quantification, structuring, language, and imaging, with the utilization of local environmental information by digital earth in ESD in mind. Using this framework, we analyzed actual ESD content using digital earth, starting with operations such as "quantification," "verbalization," and "imaging" to "make the invisible visible," and then repeating "structuring" to make the other person understand. The repetition of "structuring" is considered important in the formation of easy-to-understand ESD content.