Date/Time
Date(s) - Mon 27 July
12:00 - 13:00
Abstract:
Coastal ecosystems are affected by both global and local environmental changes. Assessing these impacts and projecting the future of ecosystems is important for the sustainable use of ecosystem services and fishery resources. In this context, Associate Professor Nakamura and colleagues developed an integrated land-ocean-benthic and pelagic ecosystem model to assess environmental change, the dispersion of terrestrial loads, and their impacts on coastal ecosystems. They used the SWAT+ (Soil and Water Assessment Tool Plus) watershed model to estimate freshwater, red soil, and nutrient runoff from land into coastal areas. The physical environment was investigated by coupling the ROMS ocean model and SWAN wave model within the COAWST Modeling System (Warner et al., 2010). Higher resolution was achieved by multi-nested downscaling from global and regional ocean reanalysis products. Furthermore, the land-ocean model is coupled with the newly developed pelagic low-trophic ecosystem model and benthic ecosystem model, named Marine Coupled pelagic–benthic ecosystem Model with Element Tracers (Marine CoMET; Nakamura et al., in prep.). A unique feature of the Marine CoMET is that all parameters, including carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus elements, have a carbon-13 isotope, a nitrogen-15 isotope, and a phosphorus tracer element, respectively. Benthic organism models for corals (Nakamura et al., 2013, 2018) and seagrasses (Takagi et al., in prep.) are also integrated. In this presentation, Associate Professor Nakamura will introduce several applications of the integrated coastal ecosystem model, covering the Sekisei Lagoon, Shiraho fringing reef, Shizugawa Bay, and Tokyo Bay cases, and discuss environmental assessment, future projection, and further possible applications.
Biography:
Dr. Takashi Nakamura is an Associate Professor at the Institute of Science Tokyo (formerly the Tokyo Institute of Technology), specializing in ecosystem modeling, coastal ecology, and coral reef science. He holds a Ph.D. and, prior to his current appointment, held postdoctoral research positions at Tohoku University, Hokkaido University, and the Tokyo Institute of Technology. His main research interests are: (1) understanding how coral reef ecosystems respond to multiple environmental stressors, (2) identifying strategies to mitigate and support recovery from the recent degradation of these ecosystems, and (3) developing a “socio-ecological systems” framework for the sustainable use of ecosystem services. To achieve these goals, he has developed a coral polyp model that reproduces the metabolic responses of corals to multiple environmental factors by explicitly describing the underlying physical, chemical, and physiological processes. He has also developed an integrated land–ocean–ecosystem model that reproduces the coral reef environment in detail, accounting for terrestrial influences from both natural and anthropogenic sources, as well as global-scale impacts on coral reef ecosystems. The coral polyp model has been coupled with the integrated land–ocean–ecosystem model to assess the current and projected states of coral communities. All model codes developed by Dr. Nakamura are openly and freely available. He also has experience organizing model workshops to expand the user community. His work has been published in international journals, and he contributes to international coastal ecosystem conservation initiatives.
University of Waikato Environmental Research Institute seminar