This study aims to clarify the actual conditions and issues of parks and open space use for environmental education of elementary schools. The elementary schools in Chiba City were selected as case study schools. In the environmental research, the distance from schoolyard to parks and open space, the area and type of parks and open space were looked at. The questionnaire survey was conducted with teachers managed each graders. The main contents of the questionnaire were concerned with the locations of parks and open space used for environmental education, the actual conditions of its use, and the consciousness of environmental education in parks and open space. The results are as follows: 1) The basic parks for neighborhood, which located near to the elementary schools, were often used for environmental education. 2) Mainly, the parks and open space were used for the observation of plants and insects. 3) In order to enhance the use of the basic neighborhood parks, it is necessary to provide teachers with teaching materials and to development the environmental education programs. 4) It is possible that the curators of pupils and the inhabitants become the partners with teachers for environmental education in elementary school.

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This study investigates how the difference of the paddy field management during winter affects the conditions of the aquatic animal in spring in valley-bottom paddy fields. We used a 50cm-sided cubic box to sample aquatic animals in the paddy field. We first placed the box sampler in the targeted paddy field, then, we captured all the aquatic animals in the box sampler through a net. We believe that this method is efficient in order to determine the fixed quantity of the aquatic animal in the paddy fields, though after July it could be difficult to install the box sampler among grown rice plants.
With the sampling method, we have affirmed the existence of 7 classes of the taxonomical group, which includes 16 species from 12 families of Insecta in the research from April through June in 2001. The sampling right after reconditioning the fields by pudding resulted in collecting much less aquatic animals. With the results, we suspect that pudding paddy fields in May temporarily damaged the aquatic animal in the paddy fields. However, after more than a week from the pudding we found that the number of aquatic animals increased, and the aquatic fauna in the paddy fields seemed to be recovered from the damage. On the other hand, the paddy fields that were not padded before rice plant transplantation, and the non-tilling of the paddy fields, maintained a highly dense population of individuals, especially, Ceratopogonidae.
In June we noticed an increase of Chironominae, and a highly dense population of individuals in the well-drained paddy fields (approximately 280 individuals /0.25m²). In contrast, we sampled only 50 to 150 individuals /0.25m² in the poorly-drained paddy fields. The more Sphaerium japonicum japonicum and Buranchiura sowerbyi are sampled, the less drained the paddy fields are. The population density of B. sowerbyi is relative to the moisture condition of the paddy field during winter.

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