Abundant temporal information of MODIS data is useful for capturing phenological pattern of crops and for estimating their productivity with high reliability. However, the spatial resolution of MODIS data is so coarse that several types of land cover may simultaneously occur within a pixel, thus it is made difficult to extract pure spectral response of crops from MODIS data only. In this study, we tried to estimate pure NDVI seasonal profiles of irrigated crops in south central Turkey by the application of the unmixing model in combination with precise land cover maps derived from Landsat TM images. Estimated profiles showed a good agreement with the NDVI seasonal profiles from pure pixels with an average relative error of 0.05 for crops. The results also agreed well with the crop calendar of the area. A fair correlation (R²=0.74) was found between the estimated NDVI and crop coefficient (Kc) of the irrigation planning in the area at full cover, indicating that the estimated NDVI can be employed to estimate evapotranspiration to some extent.

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Host fish species that contributed to recruitment and reproduction of Unio douglasiae nipponensis in the newly-built biotope pond were examined by artificial parasitic experiment. Juveniles of U. d. nipponensis were obtained from 6 of 12 fish species and transformation ratio was higher in Zacco platypus and Rhinogobius sp. (95.3 and 88.1%, respectively) than the other host fish species (less than 5%). Additionally, in the survey of field, intensity and prevalence of glochidia on fish was the highest in Z. platypus, and the relative abundance of Z. platypus was relatively high among fish species inhabiting the biotope pond. For these reasons, it became clear that Z. platypus played a significant role in the recruitment and reproduction of U. d. nipponensis in the biotope pond.

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We analyzed habitat preference for foraging or resting the site of Jungle crows (Corvus macrorhynchos) and Carrion crows (C. corone) in Morioka, northeastern Japan. During breeding and non-breeding seasons, we found that Jungle crows foraged and rested in urban and leafy residential areas while Carrion crows rested in urban or leafy residential areas but foraged especially at rice paddy fields. Our findings implied that garbage would be more important food resource for Jungle crows than that for Carrion crows. In addition, we revealed that these two species were sympatric in urban and agricultural areas preferred foraging sites for both species.

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We attempted to clarify how meteorological conditions can affect the mortality of five species of livestock; camel, horse, cow, sheep and goat, in Dornod prefecture located in the east Mongolia. At first, the total number of five livestock tended to be changed mainly according to long-term change of socioeconomic conditions, and those mortality rates were influenced by the short-term change of meteorological conditions. From the result of regression analysis which estimated the relationship between monthly meteorological conditions and mortality rates of five species of livestock, it was clarified that the mortality rate of camel and horse was influenced especially by meteorological conditions in summer. The mortality rate of camel increased in summer season with low air temperature and much rainfall, and that of horse also increased in summer with low air temperature, but was little influenced by meteorological conditions of winter season. On the other hand, the mortality rate of cow, sheep and goat was increased in the heavily snowy conditions of winter season and with little precipitation of April and October when snowmelt and snowfall started respectively. Furthermore, it was clarified that the mortality rates of horse, sheep and goat were increased by low air temperature of April when heavy blizzard and sandstorm often occurred.

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Simultaneous analysis of seepage flows in porous media and regular flows in fluid domains has a variety of applications to practical problems. The objective of this paper is to provide a numerical method to simulate these two different flows simultaneously and continuously. To this end, the authors have employed the Darcy-Brinkman equations, which include the Navier-Stokes equations and can approximately describe Darcy flows by changing the values of porosity and hydraulic conductivity. This paper explains the procedures to provide stable solutions of the governing equations and presents several numerical results of the simultaneous analysis. The key to obtain the stable and physically natural solutions lies in the interpolation of variables onto the interface between the porous and fluid domains. The numerical results by the proposed method have shown the stable and natural behavior of fluids over two different domains.

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Application of Ground Source Heat Pumps (GSHP), which extract ground thermal energy, may change ground thermal conditions. These changes raise concerns for possible deformations and reductions of shear strengths in the ground. The typical GSHP range of thermal influence is until 50 m of depth and the maximum temperature applied is around 50 ° C. The range of thermal influence will include unsaturated soil layers. In this study we therefore investigated the mechanical behavior of both unsaturated and saturated soils due to temperature changes and also proposed a model for this. Two series of tests for a silt named DL clay: suction and temperature controlled tests and heating and cooling tests, were conducted with a thermal control triaxial compression apparatus for unsaturated soils. It was found from the tests that the peak strengths were affected by temperatures and the specimens with lower temperatures had higher strengths. However, the strengths at critical state were almost independent of temperatures. In the elastic region the specimens expanded and shrank due to heating and cooling, respectively. From the data obtained in this study and previous works, we formulated a thermal elasto-plastic model for unsaturated soils taking into account two thermal effects and two suction effects. We investigated the typical test results by using the elasto-plastic model. It was found from the results that the elasto-plastic model could qualitatively express the behavior.

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Regional frequency analysis (RFA) has an advantage in size of usable data over the conventional at-site frequency analysis (SFA). Thus, the RFA is a potential approach for reliable estimation of design rainfall for drainage planning and flood control planning especially in the case that usable data is limited when available record length is short, which is because, for example, observing period is short or length of a climatologically homogeneous period is limited due to long-term climate change. This paper deals with a case study of RFA of daily rainfall observed at 155 hydrometeorological observatories in Japan. In advance to RFA, the observatories were categorized into eight regions by adjusting a result of cluster analysis based on similarity in statistics of daily rainfall and geographical closeness, and validity of the classification was assessed by checking discordancy of each rain gauge in each classified region and homogeneity of each region. The eight regions were similar to region classification for applying flood envelope curve in Japan. The results show that RFA estimates are close to SFA estimates, and bootstrap confidence intervals of RFA estimates were narrower than those of SFA estimates at almost all observatories, which suggests higher confidence of RFA estimates than those of SFA estimates.

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This study unveiled the distribution pattern of total carbon (TC), total nitrogen (TN), and total phosphorus (TP) in the surface sediment of Lake Ogawara. Furthermore, zoobenthos community structure was compared between sites with different TP level. Our results suggested: (1) The distribution patterns of TC, TN, and TP were different spatially: TN was enriched in the center part of the lake where water depth is deep, while TP was enriched in the southern part of the lake where the major inflowing rivers are inpouring. (2) Dominant species of zoobenthos was different between northern-center, and southern part of the lake: Corbicula japonica was dominant in the northern-center part, while Tubificidae sp. was dominant in the southern part. (3) Distribution of particle size and TN in each size fraction was different at the three sites, which was attributed to the material loading from the inflowing rivers. In summary, it is suggested that the sediment environment and zoobenthos community structure in the Lake Ogawara is influenced by the loading of substances responsible for eutrophication from the inflowing rivers.

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The fly ash (coal ash) discharged from a thermal power plant as an industrial by-product can serve for a constitutive material of geopolymer. However, geopolymers which have been produced from some kinds of fly ash do not solidify and the strengths are weak. The strengths were improved remarkably by addition of ground granulated blast furnace slag, generated as a by-product in an iron mill, into the fly ash (Matsuura JIS ash). The maximum compressive strength was obtained in M8S2 geopolymer which was produced by using Matsuura JIS ash and ground granulated blast-furnace slag in a weight ratio of 8:2. The compressive strength of M8S2 geopolymer produced in winter season did not exceed the strength of the M8S2 geopolymer which produced in summer season. Then the improvement of the strength of M8S2 geopolymer was found out remarkably in cases of temperatures higher than approximately 20°C. Moreover, the investigations of the improvement of strength were examined by the results of compressive, tensile and bending strengths, chemical constitution of the materials, and SEM observation.

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There are widely distributed paddy fields along Lake Kasumigaura. In many of these areas, irrigation drainage systems have been used to discharge water to the lake at night and to irrigate the fields with lake water in the daytime. In 2009, cyclic irrigation was introduced in which discharged water was stored in a bank-based water canal at night and was irrigated to the paddy fields again in the day. In 2010, cyclic irrigation was carried out after sediment was dredged in the bank-based water canal. The load reduction effect of this cyclic irrigation was examined by comparing it with the early method of irrigation used in 2008. Results of the comparison showed that on days in which the weather was good, the load to the lake could be managed by cyclic irrigation. However, during periods of rainfall, the load to the lake increased. It was observed that an accumulation of load in the bank-based water canal was discharged to the lake. Therefore, when sediment was dredged in the canal, the load to the lake decreased. In particular, the total phosphorus (T-P) load decreased greatly. The net effluent load of T-P was - 0.3 g·ha^{- 1}·d^{- 1} before dredging, but it was - 6.4 g·ha^{- 1}·d^{- 1} after dredging.

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For effective maintenance and management of pipeline system, it is necessary to evaluate not only the damage of pipe materials but also the detection of pressure waves such as water hammer. In this study, non-destructive inspections of pressure waves are proposed by applying acoustic emission (AE) and image analysis. Thus, pressure waves were detected in the model pipeline system, based on control of valve closing time (0.40-10.48s). The AE behavior of pressure waves were dependent on the degree of maximum pressure scale and could be evaluated applying AE parameter analysis. Using digital image correlation method (DICM), a relationship between maximum pressure level and displacement is correlated. By monitoring the pressure waves in model pipeline based on these results, the generated pressure waves was successfully detected by non-destructive inspection methods.

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