SU Guandong
Name: SU Guandong
Department: Graduate School of Letters, Division of Humanities
Course: Culture Creation Course
Research Field: GIS and RS Associated Analysis of Land Use/Cover Change and Its Driving Forces in Mountainous Areas
Supervisor: TOMOZAWA Kazuo
Career and Academic Background before TAOYAKA Program
Prior to join the Taoyaka Program, I was a student at Capital Normal University, Beijing. During my university study, I joined the research project “Ground subsidence monitoring by GPS” and “The Pre-study on 3D Modeling of the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Large Angle Side View Images”, and acted as the project leader on the second project which helped to improve my research ability. I was also a member of school’s Top-notch talent training plan. In July 2011 I took part in the teacher’s national projects. I came to Yunnan province, my hometown to do research. The study lasted for about 20 days and covered about 6000 km. On July, 2013, I took part in the Joint Regional Internship in China which included many domestic top universities and some overseas universities. This internship lasted for about 2 weeks, and involved the study of the spatial structure of a district and its people and local culture. As the saying goes, “Travelling 1000 miles is as important as reading 1000 books.” Hopefully, such unforgettable life experiences could help me a lot in my future research.
Research Plan in TAOYAKA Program
My current research plan is mainly focusing on Land Use/Cover Change and Its Driving Forces in Mountainous Areas. Since 1995, the International Geosphere-Biosphere Program (IGBP) and the Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change (IHDP) put forward the “land use and land cover change” (LUCC) research project. Since then LUCC has rapidly become the frontier of global change research. Recently, agriculture and rural areas in Japan’s disadvantaged areas have been pushed to the edge of crisis. Japanese agricultural structures are weakening due to a reduction in agricultural land area and a shrinking and aging agricultural workforce. My research will not only focus on land use/cover change, especially for abandoned land, using GIS and RS technology, but also will address the driving forces by conducting some field and questionnaire surveys. This will hopefully reveal the internal mechanisms and change processes of land in mountainous areas.
Career Plan after TAOYAKA Program
After graduation from the Taoyaka Program, my plan is to utilize my professional knowledge and abilities to the development of mountainous areas. To start with, I will continue to learn through study as well as field work in the program. Moreover, I will try to understand regional society and culture, and accordingly develop technologies and implement these for resolving the problems faced by disadvantaged regions. Furthermore, I would like to conduct GIS and RS analysis related to social development issues of mountainous regions.