Survivability and life support in sealed mini-ecosystems with simulated planetary soils.

Establishing a sustainable life-support system for space exploration is a formidable challenge due to the vast distances, high costs, and environmental differences from Earth. Building upon the lessons from the Biosphere 2 experiment, we introduce the novel "Ecosphere" and "Biosealed" systems, self-sustaining ecosystems within customizable, enclosed containers. These systems incorporate terrestrial ecosystems and groundwater layers, offering a potential model for transplanting Earth-like biomes to extraterrestrial environments.

Detecting groundwater level changes related to the 2016 Kumamoto Earthquake.

This study presented the first attempt to detect precursory changes in groundwater level before the 2016 Kumamoto Earthquake. This detection was achieved by accurately determining the relationship between long-term groundwater level fluctuation and crustal deformation over 16 years through analysis of groundwater level time-series data acquired at 17 sites within the study area. Here, we show that the observed groundwater levels were lower than the modelled levels in aquifers composed of porous strata (Togawa lava and part of the pre-Aso volcanic rocks), and that there were larger differences until 2014, which diminished until the occurrence of the Kumamoto Earthquake.

Spatiotemporal distribution and fluctuation of radiocesium in Tokyo Bay in the five years following the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (FDNPP) accident.

A monitoring survey was conducted from August 2011 to July 2016 of the spatiotemporal distribution in the 400 km2 area of the northern part of Tokyo Bay and in rivers flowing into it of radiocesium released from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (FDNPP) accident. The average inventory in the river mouth (10 km2) was 131 kBq⋅m-2 and 0.73 kBq⋅m-2 in the central bay (330 km2) as the decay corrected value on March 16, 2011.