The research committee on environmental systems, JSCE, established a working group of the research strategies in FY 2004. The working group discussed intensively on the following three issues. 1) The state of the art and the future perspective of environmental systems research, 2) University education on environmental systems, 3) Writing an introductionary book of environmental systems in order to spread the paradigm of environmental systems. This paper introduces the working group activities, and also describes an extraction of the discussion, retrospect, prospects and the future deployment of the environmental systems research.

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The authors have devised an environment-impact information system for eco-friendly driving. This system is available to the public on the internet. It makes the actual impact of using a car clear. If a driver knows the effect that driving a car has on the environment, that person may be inspired to change the way he/she uses the car. Young people and others who use their cars a lot are not presently acting in an eco-friendly manner. The result of a factor analysis shows that selfish car use is not eco-friendly driving. Furthermore, the devised system is effective in the consideration improvement of the eco-friendly driving.

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The purpose of this paper is clarifying long-term effect which it has on expenditure of exhaustible resource by environmental education. Especially, in this paper, process in which the individual who has the present-biased preference by environmental education changed into rational individual was expressed clearly. Therefore, the model of this paper was used the quasi-hyperbolic discount function, and the numerical analysis was performed.

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To carry out proper countermeasures for soil and groundwater contamination caused by hazardous waste materials, it is necessary to systemize procedures from investigation to remediation. In this study, data required in the countermeasures and processes to convert data were extracted, and each data was related with the processes, using the concept of data model. Especially, the data model for investigation and analysis was developed, which enables to analyze groundwater contamination. By applying the data model to a real contaminated site, groundwater contamination analysis was successfully conducted. Namely, it was shown that functions of numerical simulation in the data model for investigation and analysis could be effectively applied in the actual countermeasures.

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The snow-melting system using underground thermal energy collected by foundation piles for a building has been commonly used in parking lots and sidewalks in Fukui City because this system is cost-effective and energy-consuming. This system has been applied to bridge in order to prevent the road surface from freezing and being covered with snow. Large inner diameter steel piles placed a few meters apart in rows and columns typically for a bridge foundation are at a heavy disadvantage in collecting underground thermal energy. Though the numerical simulation shows that the group of piles is effective in storing solar energy collected by running the pump in summer until winter.

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Accumulation characteristics of PCBs in Mussel during its growing stage are discussed to estimate mussel as a bioindicator for monitoring. It was shown that the content of PCBs in the mussel is not affected by its growing satge and size from the culturing test, seasonal sampling test and different-size sampling test. Concentration factors are not affected by the size from the viewpoitnts of homologue and isomar of PCBs, too. Concentration mechanism of the isomars in SS is explained by adsorption mechanism with adsorption constant of organic carbon of the isomars. Though the values of concentration factor of the isomars from sea water to Mussel increases with increase of Cl numbers, as similar as SS, until Cl number of 7 from 10³ to 10⁵ order, the values of isomars with Cl number of 8 decrease, differently in SS, to 10⁴-10³ order. The isomars of #141, #174 and #170 have also low values of the factor as around 10⁴.

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In this study, accumulation characteristics of PCB from sea water to mussel, sampled from 10 points in Osaka Bay and the Open Sea of Harima, were discussed to estimate whether PCB content in mussel reflect PCB pollution in water body and is applicabile as a bioindicator. PCB content in mussel was shown to reflect the PCB level and characteristics in water from the viewpoints of Total PCB (PCBs), homologues and isomers. Concentration factor of PCBs from sea water to mussel was around 20,000. Concentration factors of each homologue increase with Cl number of PCBs until 6 and then decrease. Those values of homologues with Cl number of 5, 6, and 7 were 70000±44700, 92500±38900 and 55900±43000. It was also shown that the distribution patterns of homologue of PCB can be used to estimate the source of PCB pollution with principal component analysis. The distribution of PCB isomers in each component of mussel are almost similar except for bysus whose PCB content is negrigible. From these results, mussel is clearly difined to an excellent bioindicator of PCB pollution in water body.

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We developed a numerical model for Water-NAPL Tow Phase Flow in porous media in a previous paper, and the developed model was compare with a usual numerical model. As the result, it was found that the Modified Picard approximation which developed by Celia et al. for Air-Water Tow Phase Flow, compared accurate with the usual Fully Upwind Finite Difference Method. Therefore, as that continuation, equations of Air-Water-NAPL Three Phase Flow are approximate by Modified Picard approximation, using Finite Element Method in this paper. Furthermore, results of numerical analysis, using Modified Picard Finite Element Method, is compare with results of Fully Upwind difference method, and it is indicated that Modified Picard Finite Element Method give better accuracy than Fully Upwind difference method.

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We focused on and verified the efficacy of loss with the ignition method and the colorimetric method as applied to humic substances extracted using an alkaline medium. These are simplified methods of measuring organic (i.e. carbon) content and require no specialized equipment but they are rarely utilized in the field of forest soils and afforestation. Applying the ignition temperature at 600°C and the ignition time at 30 minutes, the ignition loss and the carbon content in the surface soils of the organic layer in the forest show a positive correlation (R²=0.998). Applying 0.5g of air-dried sample for each 20mL of the alkaline medium, we found a positive correlation between the carbon content in the soil and the absorbance (A₆₀₀) of the humic substance extracted, using the alkaline medium in the surface layer at the wavelength 600 nm (R²= 0.833). Therefore, both ignition loss and A₆₀₀ can be utilized in the simple measurement of the carbon content (i.e. organic matter content) of the sample.

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