Himiyama Yukio, Satake Kenji, Oki Taikan (ed.) Human geoscience

Springer, 2020. — 336 p. — ISBN 978-981-32-9224-6Human geoscience is a new genre of geoscience, or earth science, which is com-mitted to sustainability of human existence on the earth. It is hence concerned not only with the natural phenomena that occur on the surface of the earth, but also with their relations with human activities. It is related with humanities, social sciences, environmental sciences, agricultural sciences, and engineering, particularly, in relation to disaster prevention and mitigation, as well as with more traditional f i elds of geoscience including physical geography, geomorphology, geology, soil science, climatology, meteorology, hydrology, seismology, and volcanology. They are all important f i elds for resource use and management, geo disaster prevention and mitigation, and tackling global environmental problems for enhancement of sustainability.
Human geoscience started to take shape in Japan in the early 2000s and evolved while the world science community was advocating “science for society”. In fact, “earth science for society” was the slogan of the United Nation’s International Year of Planet Earth (IYPE) initiated by UNESCO and the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS) in order to help building safer, healthier, and wealthier societies by ensuring greater and more effective use of the knowledge held by earth scientists. It was hence timely for the geoscience community in Japan to establish Human Geoscience Committee in Science Council of Japan (SCJ) in 2006, and Human Geosciences Section in Japan Geoscience Union (JpGU) soon afterwards.
In fact, they played important roles in the gigantic disasters that followed in Japan, such as the Great East Japan Disaster in March 2011.
This book represents the joint efforts of the members of the Human Geoscience Committee of SCJ. The Committee developed and promoted human geoscience through various activities, such as organizing SCJ open symposia, compiling official SCJ proposals, making the “road map” of human geoscience, which all contributed to intra-disciplinary understanding within human geoscience, interdisciplinary cooperation with broader geoscience and other sciences, and to trans-disciplinary challenges.