Greeting
Konnichi-wa! (Hello! Good Day!)Akira Ishiwatari (Center for Northeast Asian Studies, Tohoku University)
Director of the 2013 JpGU Meeting
Chair of the Presidential Assembly of the Member Societies of JpGU
As the newly elected chair of the Presidential Assembly of the Member Societies of JpGU, I will serve as the director of the 2013 JpGU Meeting. I have been President of the Geological Society of Japan since May 2012, and I also have memberships of JpGU, the Japan Association for Mineralogical Sciences (Councilor), Volcanological Society of Japan, Tokyo Geographical Society, Society of Earth Science Education and the Association for the Geological Collaboration in Japan as well as the American Geophysical Union and the Geological Society of America.
Checking the 1991 Meeting program for the precursor to the present JpGU meeting shows that it consisted of only five academic societies such as Seismological Society, Society of Geoelectrical and Earth, Planet and Space Sciences, Volcanological Society, Geodetic Society and Geochemical Society. The member societies rapidly increased to twelve in 1993 and count 48 in 2012, covering all study fields of earth sciences. The JpGU re-organized itself into a legally registered "general incorporated association" in 2008 and further to a "public interest incorporated association" in late 2011. In its 2012 Meeting, 177 sessions including 42 international sessions in English were held with 7318 participants (including 1500 viewers of the Golden Ring Eclipse observation event) and 3876 presentations (orals and posters). The Students Best Presentation Award was newly introduced from this year, and 38 awardees were selected and announced on our homepage (I was one of judges). Thus, JpGU has steadily grown year by year, and we foresee increasing number of foreign (especially Asian) participants and closer cooperation with other unions such as Asia-Oceania Geosciences Society, European Geoscience Union and American Geophysical Union.
My host institution, Tohoku University, was damaged by the 2011 East Japan Earthquake, and we will have to leave our offices for more than six months from this October during anti-seismic reinforcement and repair of our building. Japan is currently recovering from the destruction caused by the earthquake and tsunami, and, as earth scientists, our research should contribute to this process.
The 2013 JpGU Meeting will be held from Sunday 19 to Friday 24, May 2013 in the Makuhari Messe International Convention Center. Mihama-ku, Chiba City. You can get to this place in 30 minutes from Tokyo by train. We warmly welcome your participation and contribution to our 2013 Meeting.
Dear JpGU participants,I am Michio Kawamiya of JAMSTEC, chair of the program committee for 2013 JpGU annual meeting. At JAMSTEC, I am engaged in development of an earth system model (climate model with biological and chemical processes) used for, among others, global warming projection. Since I work in such a field where one needs interdisciplinary mindset on which JpGU put emphasis, it is pleasure for me to be a part of the JpGU meeting organizing process. I will take over from Drs. Hamano (chair of the meeting organizing committee) and Nakamoto (former chair of the program committee) the overall policy to promote poster presentations. Also, the system for setting up the program is moderately restructured so that it can reflect a wider range of viewpoints. I hope it would lead to a vitalization of the meeting, and await a lot of exciting proposals.
