An eruption of Unzen volcano on November, 1990, the Usu volcano eruption on March, 2000, and the past many volcanic activity, such as the phreatic explosion of Miyake-jima on July, 2000, are troubling the life of people. However, in the volcano area, a scene of a rich hot spring and rich nature is blessed with tourist attractions. And the agriculture consisting mainly of a dairying is performed here. Moreover, there are many resort institutions, such as a cottage ground, because plateau peculiar to volcanic topography are distributed.
People around a volcano area are important for getting to know the risk of these natural disasters. The engineers have to understand the feature of a natural disaster, and have to consider how the risk of a natural disaster is reduced. Therefore, in this paper, we investigate the geology of a volcano area, the natural disasters resulting from the geographi cal feature and the countermeasure for the disasters.
The investigation is carried by the geomorphologic analysis based on aerial photointerpretation, and the analysis of geology information and land use information at the Nasu volcano area and the Ashio mountains where is near by that volcano.
The conclusions are shown as follows.
1) Many steep slopes are located in the mountainous area of our country. However, it is clear quantitatively that there is large gentle slope which may become the place of people life at the foot of a volcano area.
2) However, the various natural disasters may occur on the gentle slopes of the volcano area as the origin of that slopes.
3) Furthermore, these natural disasters consist of sediment disaster and slope disaster by heavy rain and volcanic eruption disaster. We propose that the device of risk management and land use which put in the concept of time is required, in order to enjoy the rich nature at the time of peaceful, corresponding to each natural disaster.
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