Dr.

Brian JOHNSON

The study evaluates the impacts of India’s COVID-19 lockdown and unlocking periods on the country’s ambient air quality. India experienced three strictly enforced lockdowns followed by unlocking periods where economic and social restrictions were gradually lifted. We have examined the in situ and satellite data of NO2 emissions for several Indian...

Planning for a sustainable future involves understanding the past and present problems associated with urban centers. Rapid urbanization has caused significant adverse impacts on the environment and natural resources. In cities, one such impact is the unsettling urban growth, resulting in the urban heat island (UHI) effect, which causes...

Forest ecosystems play an indispensable role in addressing various pressing sustainability and social-ecological challenges such as climate change and biodiversity loss. However, global forest loss has been, and still is today, an important issue. Here, based on spatially explicit data, we show that over the past 60 years (1960–2019), the global...

Accurate urban morphology provided by Local Climate Zones (LCZ), a universal surface classification scheme, offers opportunities for studies of urban heat risk, urban ventilation, and transport planning. In recent years, researchers have attempted to generate LCZ maps worldwide with the World Urban Database and Access Portal Tools (WUDAPT). However...

Forest ecosystems play an indispensable role in addressing various pressing sustainability and social-ecological challenges such as climate change, biodiversity loss, and ecosystem services deterioration, hence the monitoring of the world's forests is crucial. As part of the global forest assessment workflow, a forest is generally classified and...

Globally, estimating crop acreage and yield is one of the most critical issues that policy and decision makers need for assessing annual crop productivity and food supply. Nowadays, satellite remote sensing and geographic information system (GIS) can enable the estimation of these crop production parameters over large geographic areas. The present...

The oceans have been warming globally for the past 50 years, and since the early 1990s they have been warming about twice as fast as before that time. Ocean warming and associated environmental changes are projected to continue over the century, leading to more severe extreme weather events and an increased risk of coastal disasters such as storm...

本業務報告書は、令和３年度フィリピンにおける河川流域と沿岸域での適応事業化支援業務の成果を報告するものである。本業務は、自然を基盤とした解決策の知見整理業務、参加型河川流域土地利用方法論を用いた適応事業化支援業務、および参加型沿岸域土地利用方法論を用いた適応事業化支援業務の三業務によって構成される。 自然を基盤とした解決策の知見整理業務は、近年国際場裡で注目をあつめる、気候変動を含む多様な社会課題に対して自然を活用して対処する様々な手法を包摂する概念としての「自然を基盤とした解決策（Nature-based Solutions、以下、単にNbSとする）」について、幅広く情報収集を行った上で、それらをわかりやすく紹介するウェブサイトとして整理する業務であった。業務の成果として...

Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) are one of the most creative advances in Deep Learning (DL) in recent years. The Remote Sensing (RS) community has adopted GANs quickly, and reported successful use in a wide variety of applications. Given a sharp increase in research on GANs in the field of RS, there is a need for an in-depth review of the...

Observed surface air temperature has increased in the 20th century all over Asia (high confidence1). Asian countries are experiencing a hotter summer climate, resulting in an increase in energy demand for cooling at a rapid rate, together with population growth (high confidence). A decrease in precipitation influences energy demand as well, as...