Global warming causes the sea level rise and local climate changes; in particular the increase in precipitation and warming around the freezing point, which give critical effects to the infrastructure in urban areas. Against the effects, the infrastructure should be improved on safety. However decision making on the investment to the infrastructure for keeping the same safety level will depend on the result of cost-benefit analysis regarding the total risk and benefit in the urban area. In this study, various kinds of risk and benefit existing in urban areas are classified and a general formula to calculate the net benefit is presented. Minimizing the cost and maximizing the net benefit is exemplified by inundation in urban areas. Further research work is still necessary for determination of the order of investment to maximize the net benefit in an urban area.

View full abstract

The activities of the Coastal Engineering Committee, JSCE, are introduced focusing on the global environment-related issues. A research sub-committee has been working to study the possible impacts of sea-level rise and climate change on the coastal zone since its establishment in 1992. After published a comprehensive report on the sea-level rise and climate chnage, it started the second stage of the study which aimes to identify the tasks and problems necessary for achieving the goals to create and preserve safety, atractive, and environmentally healthy coastal zones. Such goals are closely related to the sustainable development, which is also a basic concept fot the strategic responses to the global chnages in environment.

View full abstract

Studies for assessment of the impact of global warming on hydrological response are classified into three categories:[1] assessment by using the existing meteorological and hydrological data, [2] assessment based on some global warming scenarios and hydrologic models, and [3] assessment by macro-scale hydrologic models considering interaction between atmospheric circulation and hydrologic cycle. This paper reviews the studies included in the category [2] and discusses what should be done in the future for hydrologic impact assessment.

View full abstract

The “Power Plant and Regional Development forking Group” was established in june, 1991 at the Location subcommittee organized within the Energy Civil Engineering Committee of the Japan Society of Civil Engineers. The objective of this working group was to review the regional development under the community-co-existing power plant from new perspectives such as the utilization of the steam from power plants. The characteristics of a community-co-existing power plant concept are to effectively use for the regional development the resources assumed to be possessed by the power plant; such as steam, hot waste water, by products, site, frontal sea area etc, .
The working group reviewed several themes and reported to the committee in December, 1994, out of that the development of housing lots using the steam from nuclear power plants and installation of a public garbage incinerator plant within the premise of a power plant will contribute to the global environment protection.
(A) Systematic arrangement of housing lot containing 2, 000 houses adjacent to a power plant has a possibility to be a profitable heat-supply project.
(B) Disirable establishment of a public garbage incinerator plant within the premise of a power plant, mainly thermal power plants.

View full abstract

This report summarized the present activities, future directions and tasks of civil engineering consultants to contribute the global environmental issues.
Projects directly related to the issues are still less than the indirect ones namely contri-bution through environment protection projects in foreign countries, mainly in Asian region. The projects on global environmental issues are implemented in various fields such as ocean/river pollution, global warming, biodiversity, and acid rain.
The future tasks to implement global environmental issues and environment related projects are: manpower development and accumulation, improvement of language ability, and establishment of or-ganizational systems for project implementation. The technological future tasks for sustainable development are to develop the methodologies for: planning and design concerning environmental load, comprehensive assessment of the projects, and the introduction of mitigation.

View full abstract

This paper reviews recent simulation models relating climatic change. These are (1) Emission models of greenhouse gases from fossil fuel use, landuse change and other miscellaneous anthropogenic activity, (2) Global Car-bon Cycle models, (3) General Circulation Models, (4) Impact models of climatic change, and, (5) Integrated models of climatic change. Their structures, strength and weakness are briefly introduced and their representative outputs were compared. This paper also emphasized the necessity of Integrated Assessment Model as a basic tool to organize wide and large quantities of related information in ways that facilitate application of the information in decision mak-ing and policy setting.

View full abstract

From the viewpoint of economics, the problem due to global warming is not essentially different from other environmental problems. Considering its uncertainty and risk because of its long-term character, however, assessing impacts of sea level rise will become more necessary for human beings. This paper begins with a summary of considerable impacts of sea level rise on the regional economy, and consolidates available literature on the economic evaluation of countermeasure against sea level rise. The approaches of the economic evaluation are divided into three categories; assessing the costs of countermeasure; assessing the market impacts, that is assessing impacts on the production and consumption of goods and services for which markets exist; and assessing the market and non-market impacts. The scope of this study is limited to adaptive responses to sea level rise, and it does not include preventive measures, for example reducing greenhouse gases.

View full abstract

The Information Group of the Committee on Global Environment, Japan Society of Civil Engineers, organized meetings to exchange information on policies and activities for global environment and discussed common issues among its member companies. As a result, a research sub-committee has been established under the Committee on Global Environment to study environmental management systems (EMS) and the life cycle assessment (LCA) which are considered to be the two most important subjects in the construction industry to achieve sustainable development. The sub-committee consists of two study groups and is scheduled to continue the research for three years starting 1994. The goal of the EMS study group, one of the two study groups of the sub-committee, is to propose a guideline in order to suit the EMS to the construction industry. This paper presents an overview of the research conducted in 1994.

View full abstract

The objective of this study is to measure enviornmental impacts of construction and civil engineering activities by means of the life-cycle assessment (LCA). Throughout their life cycle, construction and its activities entail broad range of environmental impacts at both global and local levels. LCA can be an effective tool to measure those impacts, and to evaluate alternative construction methods, designs, and materials. In order to examine the LCA method and apply it to civil engineering construction, this study focuses on collecting recent LCA studies and emission data, and specifying objectives, processes, and framework of LCA as a practical tool.

View full abstract

The objective of this report is to discuss the marine characteristics which the author examined in connection with the marine contamination in the Arctic Ocean (Kara Sea, Barents Sea).
The sea regions subjected to the research are located in longitude 0°to 130°east and latitude 64°to 85°north. For the sake of convenience, these regions are called the Arctic Ocean.
Most of coast lines in these regions belong to Russia. In recent years, it has been clarified that in Russia high-level radioactive contamination is taking place owing to the dumping of nuclear waste materials, the release of waste liquids containing a large amount of radionuclides from mines, etc., in addition to frequent crude - oil spill accidents caused by broken petroleum pipelines. In the event that the contamination caused by such accidents directly extends to the ocean and countermeasures must be taken against it, what is most important is to gain a correct understanding of fundamental marine characteristics in these regions.
Using the observation data (water temperature, salinity), therefore, the author examined the water-mass characteristics of the Arctic Ocean with reference to the known literature and compared the results thus obtained with the results of flow analysis, and investigated the present situation of flow. Additional research was also conducted on the relationship between the analytical results of this flow and the movement of cod larvae in the Barents Sea.

View full abstract

Japan imports almost 70% of its food on the calorie base. Japanese people take Sr-90 with food from foreign countries, therefore in order to evaluate the daily intake of Sr-90 it is essential to take the food importseffects into account. The main purpose of this study is to evaluate the dynamic global performance of Sr-90 in the environment and to analyze its accumulation in Human body. Global fallout of Sr-90 model was developed and combined with Sr-90 intake model and Sr-90 bone accumulation model.
Using the mathematical model, numerical simulations were done to obtain the characteristics of Japanese people's Sr-90 intake through daily food, their variation since late 1940's and to find practically feasible health risk reduction options.

View full abstract

Fallout Cs-137 from atmospheric nuclear detonation tests has been worldwide transported in the environment and finally taken by human through various pathways. In paticular, dietary uptake pathways are very important for evaluating the human health risks by long-term global low level radioactive contamination. In this study, the global Cs-137 transport model containing various possible pathways to total dietary uptake by Japanese is proposed considering the dynamic performance of Cs-137 in global atmospheric environment and its deposition on the land surface. The model includes the pathway through the foods import from all over the world. The proposed model was examined by comparing the numerical simulation results with the monitoring data of Cs-137 in Japanese total diet. and the Japanese health risk was evaluated. The main results obtained in this study are as follows:
(1) The proposed model is promising for evaluating the Japanese dietary intake of global radioactive fallout Cs-137.
(2) Uptake of Cs-137 by ingestion depends minly on farm products during high deposition periods and on marine products during low deposition periods., Japanese dietary Cs-137 intake from foreign countries through imported is foods increasing.
(3) The Japanese risk of developping cancer by internal radiation was estimated at maximum about 10 persons annual excess death per 1 billion.

View full abstract

A diagnostic Ocean General Circulation Model (O-GCM) was developed to estimate the dispersion of CO₂ in the ocean. The model simulated the ocean circulation based on the annual mean hydrographic and wind fields. The effectiveness of isolation (i. e., retention time) for the CO₂injected at the North Pacific intermediate deep water was examined, using the computated the annual mean circulation in the world ocean. Particle tracing was carried out to study the water mass movement at the intermediate depth in the North Pacific Ocean, which suggests that the CO₂injection into 1000m depths of the North Pacific Ocean could provide an effective measure of the short term isolation of the collected CO₂.

View full abstract

Precise representation of oceanic behavior, especially ocean circulation, is requiredto simulation of climate change. Lately, satellite remote sensed data have been intensively applied to ocean circulation observation. Satellite altimeter measures the distance from the satellite to the sea surface which, when combined with the satellite orbit data and the earth's gravity field data (the geoid), can be used to infer the sea surface geostrophic velocity field. However the present geoid data, which has geographical variations much larger than those of the oceans, is not well known on length scales significant to ocean currents. In this study, the new method is proposed to derive the sea surface geostrophic velocity field in the region of the Kuroshio and its Extension from the TOPEX/POSEIDON altimetry data without using geoid data on the basis of some dynamic characteristics of the Kuroshio and its Extension. The estimated geostrophic velocity fields represent the behavior of simultaneously observed drifting buoys.

View full abstract

Coastal landform would receive serious impacts from global warming-induced sea-level rise. The responses of these natural environment to changes in mean sea level are studied focusing on sandy beaches and river mouths. The Bruun Rule is used to evaluate the shoreline retreat and the area eroded by sea-level rise. For 30cm, 65cm and 100cm of sea-level rise, 56.6%, 81.7% and 90.3% of the currently existing sandy beaches would disappear, respectively. Even a small amount of sea-level rise may seriously exaccerbate beach erosion in Japan. The transport and deposition of sediment around a river mouth are examined by a numerical model. It was found that sea-level rise would shift the positions for sedimentation upstream, and that this, in turn, increased the river surface producing higher potential for the river flooding.

View full abstract

An integrated information system for analyzing global environmental issues has been developed. Using this system, it is possible to collect, process, store or present data with integration of data bases and a GIS (Geographical Information System) concerning environment and development. In this system, socio-economic data are treated as zone data, and natural ecosystem data as mesh-data. The data can be converted to each other, overlayed and demonstrated by way of slide-shows. The system can be used as a tool for studying global environmental problems which are the result of complex interaction of number of natural, social and economic factors. It can also predict future status of environment and development and analyze environmental policies with the aid of some particular numerical models.

View full abstract

This study accounts for the flow of environmental loads pertinent to international trade in goods and services, using energy consumption and associated CO₂ emission as indicators. First excercise is on the trade structure of environmental loads all over the world by using the world trade statistics of IMF. The result shows that there is significant unbalance between advanced and developping countries. Next, the trade balance of environmental loads in the Asia-Pacific region is analyzed by using commodity trade statistics and intensities of environmental impacts that are calculated based on input-output tables of each country. The results of this analysis show that the indirect flow from Asian countries to Japan and U. S. A. is especially large. With the economic development in some Asian countries, the energy embodied in goods exported to the other countries has greatly increased. Furthermore, a similor analysis is made for the forest resource.

View full abstract

As world economy expands, difference in environmental policies, particularly that of environmental standards, between countries draws growing attention. It has been pointed out that the environment of countries with less stringent environmental policies would be worsen through investment of “dirty” industries and/or export of such products. This issues had been already investigated in OECD during the early 1970s. However, it became an agenda at a later stage of the negotiation of GATT Uruguay round, and will likely be discussed at APEC and newly organized WTO. This paper reviews the effect of international trade and investment on environment, and discusses feasibility of international harmonization of environmental standards. Regarding East Asia where there is no significant difference in the environmental policies, efforts for proper implementation of the existing policies would be more crucial than the harmonization which might consume time and cause confusion. In terms of global issues, harmonization of standards of CFCs and green house gases are required with consideration of economic situations of countries.

View full abstract

Motorization results in serious environmental consequences such as air pollution, greenhouse effect, and so on. Several European countries have taken the initiatives in formulating various policy measures in the transport sector aiming at environmental protection.
In this paper, historical evidences of the relationship between several transport policies proposed or implemented in Europe and environmental consciousness of governments and citizens are examined. Then, these policies are reviewed in detail. Through the analysis, it is found that 1) environmental protection consciousness is reflected on implemented policies, 2) policy objectives, implemented measurements, and intended scope vary even within the same country, 3) in these countries, environmental protection is the consensus of the nation, 4) implemented policies do not reduce economic efficiency, and 5) spatial scale of some policies is international.

View full abstract

The concept of sustainable development is accepted in the world. We have many ecological or environmental friendly city plans. But we are facing a difficulty when we make sure that ecological city is sustainable or not. It is the most urgent that the valuation system of sustainablity is embodied. This caper proposed the humanenvironmental integrated thinking model, which is based on life economy, and cleared the problems for designing the sustainablity check system by applying ecological accounting and environmental audit. It is more important to develop new indexes that estimate human responsibility for eco-system or nature rather than to change ecological value into commercial value.

View full abstract

In order to utilize wasted heat energy in urban areas, it is important to design DHC supply system which meets the characteristics of demand sectors. The authors attempt to show urban infrastructure systems to improve energy consumption efficiency in urban areas. Based on a survey for energy characteristics of the Kansai Region, seven sub-systems are presented which reduce urban activity lords from urban activities for the regional environment as well as for the global one. First, the authors show seven urban energy infrastructure patterns to realize efficient energy consumption from different sources, after identifying energy consumption flow of the region. Followingly characteristics of those systems are compared. Finally the authors made preliminary analysis for the implementation of environmental infrastructure system in districts neighboring power generation plan

View full abstract

River environment in Japan has shown drastic change to lose its multifaceted functions with the development of economy and urbanization. Recently great efforts have been made to recover and enhance the river environment to meet the need of the residents. Here the necessity of comprehensive evaluation for the river envoronment is discussed and an exmaple of evaluation method is shown. The present method measures the degree of satisfactory in many kinds of residents' need based on themeasurable quantities in and around the river through the evaluation structure of the residents.

View full abstract

An overview is presented for the current status of the activities on domestic and international volunteer groups on coastal cleanup. These clean-up volunteers dedicate to conserve coastal and river enviroment, scenery and wildlife. In pursuit of these conservational goals, the groups promote public awareness, education and citizen involvement. At the present, the international clean-up network has been expanding, the number of participants for coastal clean-up campaigns has increased more than one hundred thousands and collected debris has been analysed into scientific data. The activities will continue to be important from now on, not only because the coastal debris is the worst source damaging coastal environment, but also because the clean-up provides good educational practice to search for desirable human-nature relationship in coastal and river zone.

View full abstract

The benefit of inhabitants must be considered as a main objective of river improvement projects. In this research, public opinion on the projects was collected by a questionnaire including the questions on availability of the related information; important factors for river;the desired river, bank protection, and flood plain; and personal behavior with environmental consideration. The collected answeres indicated that the information on river improvement projects was not entirely spread to the public, and both the flood control and natural environment were considered important regardless of expense of the projects, and the projects wcrc not per ceived by the public as close as the other enivironmental problems.

View full abstract

The change of life style in urban area was discussed. The key points of life style in urban area are environmental education in a family and a society, human exchange, a leisure such as outdoor sports, taking part in a volunteer or a non-profit organization.
The joint project by administration, industry, citizen and university is necessary to get a good environmental condition in urban area.

View full abstract

A research sub-committee named “Global Environmental Problems and Regional Water Environment” has been organized under Committee on Global Environment, JSCE. This report is the summary of the author's investigation based on the discussion among the members of the subcommittee. The river management for efficient use of river, safety of human life and amenity of river environment results in the reduction of variation of river discharge. The river discharge is a fundamental driving force in the change of the river environment. The stable river discharge reduces the diversity in nature of a river. But the dynamism of a river has to be restricted to maintain human existence. The author discuss the relationship between the nature of a river and the human, the relationship between the conservation of nature and the human existence, recent river works and view points for the assessment of big civil engineering works.

View full abstract

he following ideas are theoretically described: Public matters are not strictly separated from private matters in practical life although they are legally (or doctrinally) thought to be separated in modern society: The social environment is formed not only by legally public matters but also by public factors which legally private matters contain: A steady movement of conserving the social environment usually originates from a sense that even private properties play some public roles in the environment: An environmental education which promote the sense is required in order to develop a social basis for environmental conservation.

View full abstract

SMART Model proposed by De Vries et al. is often referred as a general model for estimatesoilacidification. We simplified SMART model only to include the physicochemical processes such as the aluminum dissolution and some exchange reactions. The structured model were applied to column experiments which were carried out by using simulated acid incident precipitation or throughfall (p H3.3 or 4.0). The structured model could explain the experimental results especially at the case of both simulated acid incident precipitation and throughfall. of p H3.3. Also we discussed about the validity of each parameter value.

View full abstract

To evaluate the pollutant movement in a semi-arid soil, dye was injected to the field in Tunisia and both of the vertical and the horizontal cross sections below the injected region were ob-served and taken for the photos. Since dye spreads along the preferential flows caused by cracks, the dye spreading patterns showed superior heterogeneity and the patterns should have been caused by the 3-dimensional heterogeneity. Concequently 2-dimensional convection dispersion equation (CDE) can not work for complete simulation for the dye spreading in a hetelogeneous soil.

View full abstract

Authors have studied on global land use planning for the sustainable use of global environmental resources.Through the researches, it is recognized that soil erosion possibility is necessary factor to evaluate suitability of reforestation and sustainable productivity in potential agricultural land. In this analysis, important soil erosion factors including climate, topography, soil, land cover and cultivation conditions are identified and relative weights are determined in the evaluation process based on the statistical analysis on spatial patterns of water/wind erosion severity reported by global data set on soil degradation (“GLASOD”; UNEP/GRID, 1990). As the result of the analysis, reasonable tendency and statistical significance are found with almost all factors. The possibility of water/wind erosion are estimated by using the formulas which are obtained through the analysis. For further study, investigating the relationship between soil erosion possibility and ease of forest conservation/reforestation, agricultural development/management or environmental impact due to land development will be focused to evaluate suitability of forest and agricultural land for the sustainable use at the global scale.

View full abstract

The objective of the present study is to examine this possible mitigation of summer heat in the Kuwait City area by the Kuwait Greenery Project currently being formurated at the Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research (KISR). The method of analysis for the present study utilizes a three-dimensional meso-scale atmospheric model that is considered to be in the field of computational meteorology. The simuration predicts that the air temperature would be reduced by as much as 6 deg. for the greater green belt zone and about 3 deg. for the metropolitan zone.Because of the reduced air temperature and the presence of evapo-transpiration, relative humidi ty in the greenery could increase considerably.

View full abstract

We estimated changes in precipitation due to climate change by applying the weather pattern analysis to weather-data based on M. R. I.-G. C. M.'s output under CO2*1 scenario and CO2*2 scenario. It was found that under CO2*2 scenario frequency of typhoon decreases and frequency of North pacific anticyclone increases in summer season. It was made clear that in Kanto area, Chubu area and Seinan outer belt annual precipitation decreases and in Hokkaido and To-hoku area annual precipitation increases little or does not change.

View full abstract

Two continuous five-year long simulations over eastern Asia and the Japan islands, one for present day climate (control) and one for climate under doubled carbon dioxide concentration (2XCO2) are completed with a regional climate model (Reg CM) nested in a general circulation model (GCM). The GCM is run at R15 resolution (4.5×7.5°Clat×lon) and the Reg CM is run at 50 km grid point spacing. In the control run both the GCM and the Reg CM reproduce the seasonal migration of the westerly jet, but produce a stronger monsoonal circulation than the observed, which result in a significant overestimate of summer precipitation over the eastern Asian continent. Under 2XCO2 forcing, warming in the range of 4-11°Cis simulated, greater in winter than in summer and increasing toward high latitudes. The strength of the monsoonal circulation increases in 2XCO2 conditions, leading to a general increase in precipitation over all regions by 10-30%.

View full abstract

Fine particles (aerosols less than 2μEm in diameter) were chemically characterized at Mt.Lemmon (2791m height) in Arizona from September 1992 through September1994. Monthly mean concentrations of the fine particles ranged from 0.64 to 3.49μg/ m³, which increased in summer and decreased in winter. The fine particles in the free troposphere in Arizona were made up of 8 components such as elemenrtal carbon, organics, sulfate, nitrate, chlorine, ammonium, sea-salt cations and soil particles. Monthly mean single scattering albedos of the fine particles were calculated based on the chemical characterization. They ranged from 0.84 in winter to 0.87 in spring at 0.55μm in wavelength

View full abstract

A two-dimensional channel model for the troposphere covering between 30N and 60N is constructed in order to simulate the effect of human activities on global troposphere. The model treats the processes of advection, diffusion, chemical transformation, emission from sources, dry and wet deposition and cloud transport. Calculated concentrations of ozone and PAN show a good agreement with observations. The amount of ozone is about10-20ppb, which accounts for 20-60% of present ozone concentration. This amount depends primarily on local NOxconcentration. Calculated distribution of PAN reflects temperature field. Furthermore, we run the model with the anthropogenic emissions from East Asia increased to the same emission strength of the most industrialized part of the U. S. HNO₃ concentration increased significantly near the source area at low levels, whereas PAN shows little dependence on height and longitude. The difference of these behavior is explained by the difference of their removal process from atmosphere. On the other hand, ozone shows 50% decrease in winter and 50% increase in summer near the surface over East Asia.

View full abstract

Yakushima, a small island 130 kilometers south of Kagoshima prefecture, was listed as a World Natural Heritage Site by UNESCO in December, 1993. Yakushima Island is known for giant cedar trees thousands ofyears old that grow there. The objective of this study is to examine the feature of soil and water environment in which the giant cedar tree could grow up, and to look for the way we can do for the preservation of nature in the future. Rains with a p Hvalue of 5.6 or less (acid rain) were obtained in many sites of the island. Yakushima gets more rain per year than almost any other part of Japan. The impact of acid rain was already evident on the island in the giant cedars known as “ skeleton tree” which stand at elevations of more than 1, 000 meters. It is pointed out that the biggest threat now facing the unique ecology on the island is the acid rain.

View full abstract

In this paper, the results of natural environmental investigation in Yakushima, a small island 130 Kilomerers south of Kagoshima prefecture, where was entered as a world National Heritage Site by UNESCO in 9th, December, 1993, were described. Mainly, natural waters and chemical microanalyses were carried out. It is supposed that the natural environment of Yakushima Island, in which Jyomon-japanese cedar, age of 7200 years old, grows thick, will be build up by the water environment of ultra-soft water.

View full abstract

An environmental time capsule or ET Capsule which will retain samples and data for an ultralong period is covered in this report. The samples will serve as fundamental data for researchers in the distant future. For this purpose, actual samples will be ideal to be preserved together with written records describing living things on the earth and their environments. We plan to seal the actual ET Capsule at 00:00, January 1, 2001, hoping it will be a good opportunity to leave the environment of 20th century earth for people in later centuries. This report discusses various aspects and problems associated with long-term storage of environmental and biological samples and describes the related studies we have made.

View full abstract

A meteorological observation was performed at Tokyo Institute of Technology in Meguroku, Tokyo on 1st and 2nd August, 1994. We observed wind velocity, temperature and humidity of urban area from the surface to 60m, using balloon. The surface temperatures of roof, road, and walls were also observed. As a result of meteorological observation, it is found that atomospheric temperature is large in the canyon.

View full abstract

The heat island phenomenon has become of major interest in recent years. The temperature observed in urban areas has increased in comparison with that in the suburbs. The increase in temperature is induced by urbanization such as energy consumption and human activitis. The ratio is found to be larger than that induced by global green-house effects. In the present study, the changes in temperature in the Kansai District are examined by the analysis of AMeDAS data during recent 15 years. The remarkable heat island phenomenon can be observed near Sanda New Town in Hyogo Prefecture under construction, where the daily minimum temperature in January becomes 4°C higher than that observed in former 15 years. The increase in temperature of 4°C is a suprisingly large value. The mechanism of heat island phenomenon is examined on the basis of heat balance at ground surface in terms of the change of utilization and energy consumption.

View full abstract

Phenological data enable us to understand easily the long-term change of climate. Because some of them have been observed longer than meteorological data. Moreover, they explain the change of ecosystems which reflects the climate. This research aimed at making clear the usefulness of the phenological data as an index of climate change. And here, the germination date of horse chestnut of Geneva was used, Firstly the data was compared with atmospheric data. And next the estimation was conducted by accumulating the temperature of spring, But the accuracy was not so good. I thought one of the reasons was a difference of vernalization and compared the temperatures of germination season. As a result it was found that the horse chestnut have come to germinate at a lower temperature year by year. This was because the winter warming made the vernalization completed.
In general, it is necessary to solve the complicated process of phenology before considering the data as an index of climate change. If the observation place or the the kind of plants varies, the change of phenology by global warming also varies.

View full abstract

methods of recovering, fixing and dispersing CO₂ are being developed in many parts of the world. In Japan as well, an action program for the prevention of global warming was formulated in 1990. This program aims at setting the amount of exhausted CO₂ at about the same level as 1990 from the year 2000 and onward, with the methods necessary to achieve this based on R&D and other methods according to guidelines put forth in the program. Concerning the CO₂ recovering method, in Japan, the electric power industry initiated research on CO₂ recovery methods well ahead of other industries. TEPCO has been tackling the environmental problems such as air pollution caused by SOx and NOx in view of their managerial importance. Also, we are implementing effective countermeasures for CO₂ mitigation. In this paper, we will introduce mainly TEPCO research on the countermeasures against on global warming due to CO₂.

View full abstract

Focus on the global warming, life cycle carbon dioxide emissions from the buildings are analysed. We developed the emission quantitiy estimation method for building life cycle, which starts from building material manufacturing to demolishing the buildings and waste treatment. Using this method, calculations are made for the model building. The result shows that the most effective way of reduction for CO₂ is executing energy conservation for operation process.

View full abstract

There are several approaches to analyze environmental loads from construction activities. One of the approaches is to estimate work quantity in detail and sum them up (we call' additive approach'). In this paper, we study to estimate carbon emission from a dam (using RCD (Rolled Compacted Dam-concrete) method) construction, using 'add itive approach'. To construct a RCD dam, the numbers of carbon emission are different between concrete transportation systems. So we choose three concrete transportation systems (dump track system, belt conveyer system, and cable crane system), and estimated carbon emissions respectively. And also we roughly estimated carbon emissions from a dam body construction activities.

View full abstract

It is expected that global warming may affect the water quality of rivers and lakes. For example, the rate of bio-chemical reactions in lake water would increase by increasing water temperature. Extended thermal stratification and strengthened thermocline result in increase of algal growth in epolimnion and depletion of DO in hypolimnion. The change in precipitation would alter the retention time and total nutrient load in lake. But definite quantitative change remains unknown yet.
A mathematical model was applied to a hypothetical lake to quantitatively estimate possible change in lake water quality. Climate change would decrease DO and increase COD both by 1-2mg/l. The occurrence of low-DO concentration in hypolimnion and high-COD concentration in epolimnion become earlier.
Water inflow change affects water quality with increasing COD only when nutrient concentration also increases.

View full abstract

he construction industry has been considered an industry having a significant impact on the global environment, but there is no denying the fact that it has also played a key role in constructing and maintaining the infrastructure. It is now being requested to reform itself to contribute greatly to sustainable development. Recently, as one of the measures for conserving the global environment which could be taken by companies, EMS and EA are being discussed for implementation in England, Europe and the United States and their standardization promoted by international organizations such as EU and ISO. In this respect, implementation of suitable EMS and EA is required soon for the construction sector in Japan, too. We present a draft Environmental Self-assessment Program applicable to general construction companies, which has been developed jointly by voluntary members, staff and managers in charge of global environmental affairs at several construction companies.This draft prograin was developed based on the GEMI being reviewed by ISO, and differences from the ICC 16 principles, Keidanren's 11 principles and Nikkenren's 7 Guidelines were discussed during drafting. We also show steps necessary for effective implementation.

View full abstract

In environmental projects related to construction industry, there are two different types. One is construction project of environmental infrastructure (waste disposal facility, etc.), the other is remediation project of contaminated soil and groundwater and so on. The former is traditional project for construction companies, so they have a lot of experience and understand how to treat problems which occur under construction.While the later, in particular contaminated soil remediation, is new project for them.Therefore, we investigated the experience of American remediation companies based on case studies and risk assessment guideline of US Environmental Protection Agency about contaminated soil and groundwater.

View full abstract

Man-made environment which spread into the nature with wildness and destroy the ecosystem must be organaized through three points, global ecotechnology, community ecotechnology and social system which citizen use in the daily life.In this study, the methodology is proposed for the city and regional planning of environmental organaization.

View full abstract

Preliminary analysis is attempted to examine environmental independence between urbanization and lifestyle using input-output model.Here the model is based on Japan Input-Output Tables for 1970, 1980 and 1990 at a higher lebel of aggregation. Preliminary results are shown as follows: a) yearly carbon dioxide emission patterns due to consumers'expenditure are explained as multiplication of slightly decreasin emission intensities and increasing household expenditures; b) both effecting and responsing coefficients are calculated with consideration of carbon dioxide inducement, and this shows yearly reflection of lifestyle on the industrial structure.

View full abstract