GCTE Activities in Japan

GCTE-Japan proposed an international research project "Global Change Impacts on Terrestrial Ecosystems in Monsoon Asia" (TEMA) in 1992. TEMA aimed to predict the effects of elevated CO2 and climate change on the distribution and structure of forests in monsoon Asia and to determine the associated feedback effects to the global carbon cycle. It was accepted as a Core Research of GCTE to contribute four tasks (1.4.2, 2.1.1, 2.1.3, 2.2.1) of GCTE. Research sites were first established in a tropical forest (Mt. Kinabalu), warm-temperature forest (Yakushima Island), cool-temperature forest (Ogawa, Fukushima Pref.) with support of the Environmental Agency. The TEMA research area has now been expanded to include a northern forest in Hokkaido (Tomakomai) and the Lake Biwa watershed with support of the Ministry of Education, Science, Sports and Culture (IGBP-MESSC). IGBP-MESSC focuses on predicting responses of forests with freshwater ecosystems to global change and on flux measurements of CO2 and other greenhouse gases in these terrestrial ecosystems.