Research and Development Initiatives-1

Task 1

Sustainable Management of Agricultural, Forestry, and Fishery Resources and Environmental Conservation

In recent years, environmental burdens caused by human activities have increased globally, raising concerns about how coastal ecosystems – where these impacts are most concentrated – will respond, and how the ecosystem services they provide (food supply, landscape/tourism, water purification, etc.) will be affected. In Japan’s coastal areas, the effects of warming and shifts in ocean current patterns have made various issues apparent for the sustainability of fishery resources, including changes in catch species composition, declines in resource volumes, degradation of coastal environments due to isoyake (seaweed bed loss), reduced primary productivity from oligotrophication, and mass die-offs of aquaculture organisms. In coastal zones upon which diverse stakeholders depend, it is essential to accumulate knowledge from multifaceted perspectives (including ecology and sociology) and to form co-created knowledge with industry stakeholders, in order to understand the impacts of complex environmental and anthropogenic factors on fishery resources.

Research Task Leader

Toyonobu FUJII

Research Task Leader

Associate Professor, Graduate School of Agricultural Science, Tohoku University
Researcher, Advanced Institute for Marine Ecosystem Change (WPI-AIMEC), Tohoku University

▶︎ Laboratory website｜English

Education: BSc in Ecology, School of Biological Science, University of East Anglia, UK (2002), Ph.D. in Environmental Management, Environment Department, University of York, UK (2007).
Education: BSc in Ecology, School of Biological Science, University of East Anglia, UK (2002), Ph.D. in Environmental Management, Environment Department, University of York, UK (2007). Research Experience: Postdoctoral Research Associate, University of Aberdeen, UK (2007-2009), BP Fellow, University of Aberdeen (2009-2017), Assistant Prof., Tohoku University (2017-2018), Associate Prof., Tohoku University (2018-present).
Research Interest: I am a marine ecologist and my research has involved field observations across a wide range of marine ecosystems from intertidal mudflats and estuaries, through coastal zones, to the hadal depths exceeding 6,000 meters. I have been exploring how global warming and anthropogenic pressures influence the structure, functioning and geographic distribution of biological communities across various temporal and spatial scales. Understanding the mechanisms driving changes in “coastal ecosystems”, in particular, requires not only basic environmental data such as water temperature and salinity, but also a multidimensional integration of biological, physical, and socio-economic data that constitute the “social-ecological systems” at the interface between ocean and society. Through integrated analysis of diverse datasets obtained from ongoing coastal environmental monitoring in Miyagi and Mie Prefectures, I would like to predict how coastal ecosystems may respond to future environmental changes. My goal is to develop high-precision and locally tailored forecasting models for current state of the coastal socio-ecological systems and thereby contribute to the establishment of sustainable coastal environmental management practices.