Designing Low Carbon Societies in Landscapes
Landscape Ecological Approaches to a Low Carbon Society
Nobukazu Nakagoshi and Jhonamie A. Mabuhay
Abstract The first Global Environmental Leaders (GELs) education programs were commenced in 2008 as a 5-year national program financed by the Special Coordination Funds for Promotion of Science and Technology under the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Japan. The GELs program for designing a low carbon society of Hiroshima University has successfully developed human resources selected from graduate schools and government institutions throughout the world. Capable young researches and experts have been fostered to the level that they are now able to participate in the international scientific societies such as the International Association for Landscape Ecology (IALE), the International Association for Vegetation Science (IAVS), and the East Asian Federation of Ecological Societies (EAFES). As a result, issues relating to the low carbon society are actively discussed in those conferences and the academic quality is upgraded, which contribution was undoubtedly made by GELs researchers. Along with the implementation of this program, numerous new scientific findings have emerged, and various technological fields are remarkably advanced thanks to the constructive debates conducted at both international and local meetings. Our research at Hiroshima University particularly highlights the following areas: land use and land cover change, population dynamics and ecosystem function, multistage sensing from urban to natural landscapes, new energy from biomass resources, and development of wise managing philosophy in developing countries. It is concluded that continuous collaborations among experts are
N. Nakagoshi (*)
Graduate School for International Development and Cooperation, Hiroshima University, 1-5-1 Kagamiyama, Higashi-Hiroshima 739-8529, Japan e-mail: nobu@hiroshima-u. ac. jp
J. A. Mabuhay
College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, Mindanao State University,
Malawi City 9700, Philippines e-mail: jhonamie@gmail. com
N. Nakagoshi and J. A. Mabuhay (eds.), Designing Low Carbon Societies in Landscapes, Ecological Research Monographs, DOI 10.1007/978-4-431-54819-5_1, © Springer Japan 2014
indispensable for designing an expected low carbon society that effectively and efficiently uses biomass and services in landscapes, so that sustainability can be realized on the global level.
Keywords Biomass use • Ecosystem sustainability • Global environmental leaders • Holistic approach • Landscape type • Systematic education
