EESセミナー(1月9日)開催のお知らせ
2023-12-22下記の通り、2024年1月9日16:30~18:00にEESセミナーを開催します。ご参加をお待ちしております。We will have an EES seminar on January 9, 2023, from 16:30–18:00. We look forward to your participation.
日時（Date & time）: January 9, 2023, from 16:30–18:00
場所（Venue）: D201 of Faculty of Environmental Earth Science
演者（Presenter）: Professor Roy C. Sidle（Mountain Societies Research Institute, University of Central Asia / Yamano Bosai, Akiruno, Japan）
講演タイトル（Talk title）: Challenges to Sustainable Development and Livelihoods in and Around the Water Towers
Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan rank among the most mountainous nations worldwide, both with more than 90% of the land area in mountains. The Pamir with the highest peak in the region (7495 m a.s.l.) are the dominant mountains in Tajikistan and the Tien Shan (up to 7439 m a.s.l.) occupy much of Kyrgyzstan. These mountains bound the vast Fergana Valley that extends from southern Kyrgyzstan into Uzbekistan and contains unstable hills along the valley fringes with deep loess deposits presenting unique mass wasting challenges. Due to the complex orography, Central Asia has a very dynamic and spatially variable climate that affects water delivery from the Water Towers to streams that provide irrigation supplies during the dry summer months. Water is critical to support food production; runoff is supplied to upland valleys by a combination of snowmelt, glacial melt, and permafrost thaw, together with periodic rainfall. Spring and summer discharge is derived mostly from snowmelt with a lesser amount from glacier melt depending on the extent of glaciation in particular catchments. The interannual variability in snow water poses the greatest challenge for irrigation and domestic supplies, as well as hydropower production.
These mountain areas represent some of the most formidable challenges worldwide in dealing with natural hazard risks and adapting to climate change and anomalies. Hazards that frequently affect mountain communities and their agrarian livelihoods include landslides, debris flows, snow avalanches, rockfall, drought, severe erosion, and flooding; these can be exacerbated by human activities, such as overgrazing, poorly located roads and trails, fuelwood gathering in dry alpine regions, poorly located villages and farms, and unsustainable farming practices. Less frequent hazards include potentially disastrous glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs) and permafrost hazards.
To characterize climate trends affecting water supplies, glacier melt, and food security, we used remotely sensed precipitation and temperature data due to the sparse network of climate stations. In the Pamir, most areas are experiencing a warming trend, but not at the same rate. Temperatures increased across the east-central Panj and eastern Vakhsh River basins. Warmer temperatures in central Panj basin and the Wakhan corridor coupled with minor declines in snow water will likely induce water stress in local communities during dry years. In contrast, more stable temperatures in lower elevations of western Panj and Vakhsh basins together with increasing precipitation, especially in spring, will benefit agriculture and community water supplies. Varying spatial and temporal patterns of rain and snowfall occur throughout the region, often evident at granular scales. We assessed snow and temperature trends over eight glaciated regions of the Pamir and found diverse tendencies. While most sub-basins experienced some warming, this was offset in some areas by increases in snow. As such, unlike many other high mountain regions, many glaciers of the Pamir are not losing significant mass. Because of high interannual and spatial variability of precipitation throughout the area, regional climate change scenarios cannot inform adaptation measures for mountain communities and other users, and more granular-scale data are needed.
演者略歴（Biography）: Professor Roy Sidle has over 40 years of research, teaching, outreach and leadership experience in hydrology, earth sciences, environmental science, sustainability, and natural resources management in four continents — North America, Europe, Asia and Australia. Prior to joining UCA, he served as a Director of the Sustainability Research Centre, at the University of the Sunshine Coast, Australia, where he supervised numerous faculty members, post-doctoral researchers, PhD candidates, and honours students. He has held other leadership positions including the Director of Ecosystems Research Division with National Exposure Research Laboratory at the United States Environmental Protection Agency; Professor of Geology and Director of the Environmental Science Programme, Appalachian State University, United States ; Professor and Head of the Slope Conservation Section, Disaster Prevention Research Institute, Kyoto University, Japan; Professor of Geography, National University of Singapore, and Executive Officer of Land-Ocean Interactions in the Coastal Zone Project, Netherlands. Professor Sidle holds a PhD. in Soils/Civil Engineering /Hydrology from the Pennsylvania State University and a master’s from the University of Arizona, both in the United States. He is a Fellow in the American Geophysical Union and recently received the International Award for “significant contributions to progress in the field of hydrology and water resources and valuable devotion to collaboration with Japanese and Asian researchers” from Japan Society of Hydrology and Water Resources.
