Panel 3 Paper 3.2: Nature, agriculture and rural resilience: Interdependencies between natural protected areas and rural landscapes in Satoyama/Satoumi in Japan

The Capacity Building Workshops on Nature-Culture Linkages in Heritage Conservation (CBWNCL), held at the University of Tsukuba in Japan, gather Asia-Pacific heritage professionals with the aim of creating a platform of mutual-learning and exchange between the culture and nature sectors. In the first workshop on Agricultural Landscapes, from 14 case studies, 5 showed natural protected areas in tense relations with their rural landscape surroundings. However, these agricultural landscapes are essential for protecting natural values, as they form part of their larger ecosystems. In the second workshop on Sacred Landscapes, from 16 case studies, 5 case studies were also agricultural landscapes, and 8 case studies featured natural protected areas which embody spiritual values for their surrounding rural communities. In the third workshop on Disasters and Resilience, from 15 case studies, 7 presented the struggles faced by rural communities in the conservation of their natural environment and their cultural practices in a context of increasing disasters. By looking at the Japanese experience, we learned from the concepts of Satoyama and Satoumi, that the protection of nature can be interlinked with the maintenance of agricultural landscapes, that the continuity of spiritual practices is essential for identity and community cohesion, and that the maintenance of cultural practices represent community’s strength for post-disaster recovery. These lessons demonstrated that resilience lies in people and their community networks -beyond human, and underpinned on their natural and cultural heritage (both tangible and intangible)-, and that the stronger these networks are, and the more autonomy and decision-making power is recognized at local level, the higher level of resilience a landscape would show. This finding, however, raises concern, as these landscapes are facing pressures not only from urban development, but mostly from depopulation due to migration and ageing communities, processes that are eroding these networks and consequently, rural landscape resilience

Turbulence driven magnetic reconnection causing long-wavelength magnetic islands

Magnetic reconnection caused by turbulence in a current sheet is studied by means of numerical simulations of fluid equations. It is found that turbulence produces long-wavelength magnetic islands even if the current sheet is so thick that spontaneous magnetic reconnection does not occur. Thus, turbulence modifies the threshold of magnetic island formation predicted by the conventional theory of spontaneous magnetic reconnection in a current sheet. In spite of the fact that the turbulence is driven by a short-wavelength instability due to a pressure gradient, the length of the magnetic island is the same order as the system size. The width of the island is several times the ion Larmor radius, and stronger turbulence causes wider magnetic islands. This suggests that the turbulence can trigger neoclassical tearing modes, which are the main nonlinear instability that limits the plasma pressure in magnetically confined plasmas. The long-wavelength magnetic island is formed by merging of small-scale magnetic islands

Excitation of macromagnetohydrodynamic mode due to multiscale interaction in a quasi-steady equilibrium formed by a balance between microturbulence and zonal flow

This is the first numerical simulation demonstrating that a macromagnetohydrodynamic (macro-MHD) mode is excited as a result of multi-scale interaction in a quasi-steady equilibrium formed by a balance between microturbulence and zonal flow based on a reduced two-fluid model. This simulation of a macro-MHD mode, a double tearing mode, is accomplished in a reversed shear equilibrium that includes zonal flow and turbulence due to kinetic ballooning modes. In the quasi-steady equilibrium, a macroscale fluctuation that has the same helicity as the double tearing mode is a part of the turbulence. After a certain period of time, the macro-MHD mode begins to grow. It effectively utilizes free energy of the equilibrium current density gradient and is destabilized by a positive feedback loop between zonal flow suppression and magnetic island growth. Thus, once the macro-MHD appears from the quasi-equilibrium, it continues to grow steadily. This simulation is more comparable with experimental observations of growing macro-MHD activity than earlier MHD simulations starting from linear macroinstabilities in a static equilibrium

Effect of zonal flow caused by microturbulence on the double tearing mode

The effect of zonal flow shear on the double tearing mode is investigated by solving the linear reduced two-fluid equations for the equilibrium including zonal flow. The zonal flow caused by microturbulence is obtained from nonlinear simulation results presented by A. Ishizawa and N. Nakajima [Phys. Plasmas 14, 040702 (2007)]. There is no clear evidence that could indicate whether the double tearing mode is stabilized or destabilized by the zonal flow