Ceasing the acceleration of aging society and depopulation is an urgent issue for our next generation in Japan. However, alongside these problems, disparities between urban and rural areas are still expanding in relation to the economy, population, and education because of the shrinkage of regional societies in rural areas. Re-evaluating the potential of regional societies is therefore important to enhance the formation of vigorous and sustainable regional communities. In this study, as an approach for improving the potential of regional societies, we propose a method to create “civic pride” through the learning of the regional environment from geographical and geomorphological perspectives in the “the period for integrated studies” of primary education. For the establishment of this methodology, we examine various outcomes through the practices of geography and geomorphology education at a small elementary school in Yokohama City, central Japan. As a result, we found that learning regional environment from geographical and geomorphological perspectives using various approaches, including lectures and 3D topographic model making, was effective enough for pupils to obtain the “civic pride” which contributes to the sustainable development of the regional society.

School and university teachers have been developing educational materials using GIS for geomorphology classes. However, these materials often have limitations such as the lack of systematic contents. Therefore we have been developing new online materials for geomorphology education using GIS. The learning topics were selected for high school students and university freshmen and sophomores belonging to geography or teacher training courses. The materials explain geomorphology systematically using text corresponding to high school geography textbooks and WebGIS built with open source technologies: Leaflet and CesiumJS. Students are expected to understand how to read topographic maps and identify typical terrain types, by operating simple 2D or 3D digital maps. We conducted an online geography course for university students using the materials and a subsequent questionnaire survey including a test of map interpretation to evaluate the usability and learning effects of the materials. We also conducted another questionnaire survey for high school students to collect their opinions related to the usability of 3D maps. The results indicate that our materials improve the understanding of students about landforms. On the other hand, they felt difficulties in detecting landform types because they could not clearly connect map reading with their prior knowledge. These findings are useful for improving the educational materials by adding explanations and operational functions to understand landforms more effectively.

CS topographic map (CS Map) has played an important role in geomorphology education in forestry because of its visualization ability for high resolution DEM taken by airborne LiDAR. Recently, construction of forest work road has been increased in Japan due to implementation of government policy facilitating timber production. Technical staffs in Japanese local governments, therefore, have been plagued by erosion and small landslides around forest work roads. In response to this situation, the spread of CS Map has expanded among technical staff in the local governments, because they could easily find out high risk points by using CS Map where water flow concentrates. Since CS Map has invented as an open source technology, many software tools and free digital maps had released as open source data by local governments, amateur and professional programmers. Today, CS Maps in 1 m resolution are available for several regions as open data (e.g. private forest areas in Shizuoka, Nagano, Gifu and Hyogo Prefectures). It is necessary to introduce disaster risk assessment based on detailed topographic data into forest zoning. For this purpose, cooperation between local government staff and researchers and information engineers will be important.