Activities - NOWPAP

About CEARAC Activities

The activities of CEARAC (Special Monitoring & Coastal Environmental Assessment Regional Activity Centre), as the name represents, are mainly coastal environmental assessment and the development of environmental monitoring tools. The Memorandum of Understanding (2002) between UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme) and NPEC (Northwest Pacific Region Environmental Cooperation Center), host organization of CEARAC, states that “CEARAC will be responsible for coordination of regional activities for assessment of the state of the marine, coastal and associated freshwater environments, including assessment of pollutants input for the purpose of comparison with the monitoring results. CEARAC will also develop tools for environmental planning and management based on the results of the assessments.”
This page introduces CEARAC’s activities for coastal environmental assessment and development of environmental monitoring tools.

Coastal Environmental Assessment

Harmful Algal Blooms (HAB)

HAB is a serious marine environmental problem where rapid growth of toxin-producing phytoplankton leads to massive death of cultured fish and natural marine resources, resulting in devastating damage to fishery.

Eutrophication

Eutrophication is a phenomenon of abnormal increase of phytoplankton and degradation of water quality caused by excessive input of nutrient loads (nitrogen and phosphorus).

Marine Biodiversity

Marine biological diversity is crucial for maintaining the health and functionality of ocean ecosystems, and CEARAC has conducted various activities to conserve marine biodiversity.

Marine Litter

Much of plastic products including plastic bottles we use in our daily lives are often going into the ocean, and this is becoming a serious problem in many parts of the world.

Development of Environmental Monitoring Tools

Remote Sensing of the marine environment

Satellite remote sensing is a very efficient observation technology which allows to obtain information of a wide area at one time, helping in the early detection and resolution of environmental issues.

Environmental DNA (eDNA)

Environmental DNA (eDNA) is a new method to analyze water and/or soils of habitats of target species to estimate their existence. Japan is one of the leading countries of development and application of eDNA analysis.