Photo of Tsukuba rice fields in summer is by iLEAPS-Japan.
iLEAPS Executive Officer Tanja Suni and iLEAPS-Eurasia Executive Officer Hanna Lappalainen travelled to the 3rd International Symposium of Arctic Research (ISAR-3) in mid-January with the aim to create new collaboration between iLEAPS, iLEAPS-Eurasia, and Japanese and Russian scientists. One of the main points of collaboration was the Pan-Eurasian Experiment (PEEX), a new iLEAPS project coordinated by iLEAPS-Eurasia at the Division of Atmospheric Sciences in the University of Helsinki. The Finnish delegation also included Joni Kujansuu, the Finland-Asia coordinator of the Division working part-time for iLEAPS.
The delegation met five members of the Science Committee of iLEAPS-Japan in a small satellite meeting on the second evening of the conference. All the Japanese researchers present at the meeting are leading scientists in fields very relevant to either the new iLEAPS theme Sustainable Managed Ecosystems or to the Pan-Eurasian Experiment or both; Drs Takeshi Ohta, Tetsuya Hiyama, and Ayumi Kotani have more than 15 years of experience with land-atmosphere-society interactions in Eastern Siberia (http://www.chikyu.ac.jp/rihn_e/project/C-07.html) whereas Dr Kentaro Hayashi leads a large manipulation experiment on Japanese rice paddies at the Tsukuba University, looking at the influence of CO2 enrichment on carbon, methane, and, uniquely in Japan, also on reactive nitrogen cycles throughout the year (Free Air CO2 Enrichment experiment FACE http://www.niaes.affrc.go.jp/outline/face/; with nitrogen, FACE-N). The website of iLEAPS-Japan is now available in English as well; this will enable European scientists to keep track of the many land-atmosphere research activities in Japan especially around ASIAFLUX, where the leader of iLEAPS-Japan, iLEAPS SSC member Dr Nobuko Saigusa and iLEAPS-Japan coordinator Sawako Tanaka work actively to widen the flux measurement network in Japan, Korea, and other parts of South-East Asia. iLEAPS-Japan and coordinator Joni Kujansuu will also conduct enquiries in the Philippines in order to organise regional land-atmosphere-society activities there; one of the first steps will be an iLEAPS-ASIAFLUX early-career scientist workshop planned to take place in the Philippines in 2014.
iLEAPS IPO and iLEAPS-Eurasia would like to extend a very warm thank you for the entire iLEAPS-Japan group for a very pleasant and fruitful meeting!
iLEAPS-Japan
Dr Nobuko Saigusa (Chair, iLEAPS SSC member)
Ms Sawako Tanaka (coordinator)
Centre for Global Environmental Research, National Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES)
Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan