Updated @ June 2017

Welcome to  'Masaki Kanao @ NIPR'

Science Research Targets:

Masaki Kanao has been chiefly interested in Earth's evolution from geophysical data, particularly by seismological studies. Polar regions, both in Arctic and Antarctic, have been investigated by several available seismological methods such as by using passive and active sources. He also interested in present status on the structure, dynamics and past tectonics of the continental lithosphere, derived from field surveys and computer sciences. Antarctic continent, once as a member of Gondwana super-continent, is a main target field to reveal lithospheric evolution in the Earth's history.

He has been managing the seismological observations of the Japanese Antarctic permanent station, the Syowa Station of East Antarctica, and sorrounding continental margin area of Western Enderby Land - Eastern Dronning Maud Land. In order to maintain continuous monitoring observations of the broadband and short period seismometers, he has been obliged in advancing the data aquisition and transmission system by satellite communication for long years. At the IPY, he participated the United States Antarctic Program (USAP) to attend the big project named AGAP (the Antarctic Gamburtsev Province), with deplying many seismographys on the wide area of Antarctic continent.

In recent years, he has been engaged in several international cooperative studies in Shiberian region, Arctic Eurasia continent, by making use of broadband seismic observations with the member of Russian Academy of Science. He also involved in the Greenland Ice Sheet Monitoring Network (GLISN) in order to detect and minor the glacial earthquake activities associated with global warming. These investigations and observations in the Arctic region, together with Antarctic surveys, have significant contribution to the development of global Earth sciences, Federation of Digital Seismological Network (FDSN) and International Lithospheric Program (ILP), of IASPEI.

Data management issues for the retrieved data from both Polar region for all science branches are some part of his tasks as a staff of Polar Data Center. He has been a member of Standing Committee on Antarctic Data Management (SCADM) under the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) of ICSU, as well as the IPY data committee under ICSU/WMO Joint Committee during the International Polar Year (IPY2007-2008). He organized the Polar Data Forum on October 2013, at Ueno Tokyo, in collaboration with SCAR, IASC and the World Data System under ICSU.

   - AGAP/GAMSEIS IPY-

Main Topics and Activities:

His scientific activities aim to elucidating the processes of continental growth over the history of the Earth, from the perspective of the physical interactions on Solid Earth due to current global environmental change and in terms of geophysics, tectoniphysics and tectonics. He makes use of various kinds of geophysical data, most importantly is the long-term seismological information collected in polar region (e.g., travel time, waveform, epicenter).

(1) monitoring of variation characteristics of the Solid Earth, earthquake activities including ice-quakes, glacial earthquakes, in relation to time-space variations of the ice sheets, sea ice and oceans connected with current environmental changes, in particular global warming;

(3) fundamental study of observation techniques and data communication and archiving techniques for remote polar locations, and construction of a scientific database to contribute to research resources; monitoring seismic observation at Antarctic stations to contribution to FDSN, ISC and other global networks and centers.

(4) contribution to real-time prevention in the event of disasters such as major earthquakes and tsunamis using INTELSAT satellites;

(5) observation of infrasound in polar region so as to monitor the physical interaction between atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere and geosphere, with contributing to CTBTO in high southern latitudes;

(6) active promotion of international joint research at both poles in order to acquire the precious data in high latitudes, which serves as the basis for many analyses, and also to promote collaborative research works with many involved scientists.

Biography

Research Gate

Research and Development Activities (linked to "researchmap") ; (Japanese,  English)

Polar Seismology ; program introduction and related documents, Japanese Antarctic data for polar seismology

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.1 Japan License.

This work by Masaki Kanao is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License