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Yoshinari Tanaka

Professor, the Doctor of Agricultural Sciences
Yoshinari Tanaka

Address:
7-1 Kioi-cho, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 102-8554, Japan
Sophia University
Building No.2, 15th Floor, Room 1517
TEL:
+81-3-3238-4364
E-mail:
Please contact our office

Teaching

Lectures

Environmental Ecology

I will outline fundamental theories and the application of ecology, evolutionary biology, conservation biology essential to understanding the global environmental problems related to the crisis of biodiversity and ecosystem and deriving effective solutions for them. The content covers concrete and current affairs such as preservation of endangered species, invasion of exotic species, changes in ecosystems due to global warming, eutrophication of lakes and so on, and focuses on general principles in ecology and evolution behind these phenomena. The aim of this lecture is to understand diverse environmental problems, which appear as the biodiversity loss and anomalies of the ecosystem, from the viewpoint of natural sciences including ecology, evolutionary biology and conservation biology.

Ecological Risk Assessment of Pollutants

Human beings have invented a huge number of chemical substances to create material civilizations and further to maintain and develop them. In order to achieve sustainable development of socioeconomic systems, it is necessary to properly manage the risks of chemicals to the environment while using them. In this lecture, I outline the fundamentals of environmental risk study, especially as regards to environmental toxicity of chemical substances and risk management methods. Contents of the lecture include modes of action of chemical toxicities, methods of quantifying toxicities by laboratory tests, and the effect evaluation concerning the overall toxicities affecting adversely either wild lives or human health.

Coordinated Lecture

Frontiers in Environmental Study

This is an Omnibus lecture series on the most current studies of environmental sciences presented by 13 lecturers who are invited mainly from the National Institute for Environmental Studies. The whole lecture demonstrates the latest research outcomes in the wide area of environmental issues including the global warming, the crisis of biodiversity by invasive species and pesticide pollution, the loss of mangrove forests, the environmental risk of chemicals, the transboundary air pollution due to PM 2.5, the soil contamination, the waste treatment and the recovery from disaster. The lecture is held in English or Japanese every other year.

Seminar

Seminar B and D

Each seminar is offered for several participants in each spring and fall semester. We designate a textbook either in ecology, conservation biology, or environmental science for group reading, and participants set their own topics for research and study. Through group discussion on the text and selected papers they acquire the basic knowledge of environmental issues and understanding to underlying processes. I instruct procedures to collect data necessary for investigation by database use, document search, etc., to select and conduct suitable methods, and to write scientific documents. Participants train also their presentation ability that logically explains their conclusions and proposed measures derived from the results.