The Tohoku region, Northeast Japan, was hit by a gigantic earthquake which occurred in the Pacific close to Tohoku, and subsequently by a giant tsunami. These hazards have caused huge damage on the eastern coast Japan. The earthquake's magnitude was 9.0, the strongest ever recorded in Japan. The tsunami was also historical as its run-up height reached over 39 m. As of early May, 2011, over 24 thousand people were reported as dead or missing. Moreover, serious accidents at the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plants No.1 were caused by the effects of the tsunami. Therefore, the damage faced by Japanese people can be seen as a giant composite disaster. Although Japan, and the northeast of Japan in particular, has over a long time period increased its preparedness against earthquakes and tsunamis, huge damage still occurred. This paper considers why this tragedy occurred, and what unrecognized factors contributed to the high vulnerability of the area. To assist in answering such questions, this paper presents a timely report of the features of the earthquake and tsunami, the damage they caused, and the early efforts for recovery and reconstruction.

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A central question linking ecology with evolutionary biology is how environmental heterogeneity can drive adaptive genetic divergence among populations. We examined adaptive divergence of four stream insects from six adjacent catchments in Japan by combining field measures of habitat and resource components with genome scans of non-neutral Amplified Fragment Length Polymorphism (AFLP) loci. Neutral genetic variation was used to measure gene flow and non-neutral genetic variation was used to test for adaptive divergence. We identified the environmental characteristics contributing to divergence by comparing genetic distances at non-neutral loci between sites with Euclidean distances for each of 15 environmental variables. Comparisons were made using partial Mantel tests to control for geographic distance. In all four species, we found strong evidence for non-neutral divergence along environmental gradients at between 6 and 21 loci per species. The relative contribution of these environmental variables to each species' ecological niche was quantified as the specialization index, S, based on ecological data. In each species, the variable most significantly correlated with genetic distance at non-neutral loci was the same variable along which each species was most narrowly distributed (i.e., highest S). These were gradients of elevation (two species), chlorophyll-a, and ammonia-nitrogen. This adaptive divergence occurred in the face of ongoing gene flow (F st = 0.01–0.04), indicating that selection was strong enough to overcome homogenization at the landscape scale. Our results suggest that adaptive divergence is pronounced, occurs along different environmental gradients for different species, and may consistently occur along the narrowest components of species' niche.

This study evaluates the impacts of climate change on fresh groundwater resources specifically salinity intrusion in water resources stressed coastal aquifers. Our assessment used the Hadley Centre climate model, HadCM3 with high and low emission scenarios (SRES A2 and B2) for years 2000-2099. In both scenarios, the annual fresh groundwater resources losses indicate an increasing long-term trend in all stressed areas, except in the northern Africa/Sahara region. We also found that precipitation and temperature individually did not show good correlations with fresh groundwater loss. However, the relationship between the aridity index and fresh groundwater loss exhibited a strong negative correlation. We also discuss the impacts of loss of fresh groundwater resources on socio-economic activities, mainly population growth and per capita fresh groundwater resources. r

Abstract:Groundwater temperature is a key parameter regulating the ecological balance of the ecosystems in groundwater dominated wetlands, estuaries and ponds. This study evaluated the potential impacts of climate change on groundwater temperature and proposed a methodology for use in areas with limited hydrological and metrological data. Groundwater temperatures were measured in 1 m intervals in five observation wells and used for groundwater recharge estimation. Three different techniques, the water balance method, the water level fluctuation (WLF) method and Darcy's method, were performed to verify the estimated recharge rates from the temperature-depth profiles. Of the six sets of global climate model (GCM) predictions analysed, three of them were selected by considering a range of potential climate changes in the future. The transfer function method was used to downscale the GCM outputs of precipitation and temperature of the Sendai plain. Raw GCM data for nine scenarios (A2, A1B, and B1 from HADCM3, MRI, and ECHAM5 models) and observed data from 1967 to 2006 were used to develop the transfer functions. Derived functions, which were tested for 1927-1966, were used to downscale GCM data for 2060-2099. These predictions were used in a one-dimensional heat transport model, which was calibrated to the existing site conditions by the water budget technique. There are marked differences among the scenarios and GCMs. However, all the model scenarios projected increasing trends in temperature and precipitation for the 2060-2099 time period. HADCM3 A2 scenario shows the strongest effect compared with the base line climate , which involves an increase in the air temperature of 3Ð9°C and an increase in annual precipitation of 345 mm. When considering all GCM scenarios compared with observations in 2006, the aquifer temperature at 8 m depth from the ground surface could possibly increase within the range of 1Ð2-3Ð3°C by 2080. The above findings from the methodology developed here will be important for estimating the impact of climate change and will be useful for environmental management programs.