2021/11/20
The SUN project is a project to conduct research for the purpose of bringing back nature to urban areas and improving the resilience and capacity for revitalisation of regions. As one of our research activities, we started a three-year survey this past spring to examine the role that Kanazawa’s water canals and Japanese gardens play with regard to biodiversity. The first half of the fiscal year is now over, and we have carried out our survey in the targeted gardens in spring, summer and early fall. We held an interim debrief session on October 20, 2021, to which we invited about 20 guests, including Kanazawa City Hall employees, the owners of the gardens we are studying, and specialists.
There is a lot of nature and historical culture in Kanazawa, where gardens are one of the green infrastructures that symbolise the harmony between society and nature. However, there are some gardens that are difficult to maintain for reasons such as depopulation. Because of this, benefits of nature such as biodiversity, connections between people and nature, and countermeasures against global warming may be lost. In order to come up with solutions for maintaining such gardens in the future, we are carrying out research on the kinds of creatures that live there to determine the current situation.
Our survey has revealed that various rare creatures, non-native species and other species live there, and some of them entered the gardens through water canals and surrounding forests. During the session, we discussed with the participants how to maintain the gardens and canals, as well as how to prevent non-native species from damaging rare native species. We will continue to conduct our survey in November and in winter. After completing the annual survey, we will compile the results and analyse them.
