Urbanization, Energy Needs, and the Coastal Environment
in Developing Urban Centers of SE Asia

Date & time:	September 16th (Wed), 2009 13:00-14:00
Venue:	RIHN Seminar Room 3, 4 ( access)
Title:	"Urbanization, Energy Needs, and the Coastal Environment in Developing Urban Centers of SE Asia"
Speaker:	Bill Burnett (Professor, Department of Oceanography, Florida State University, USA)
Language:	English

Abstract:

As world population continues to grow, many urban centers in Asia have turned into "megacities" (>10 million people). In 1950, there was only one megacity (New York) in the world. Today there are 17 and 14 of these are in coastal environments and 11 are located in Asia. Urban transitions before 1950 were relatively slow and involved a few hundred million people. During the last 60 years, urbanization has speeded up considerably and involved billions of people.
The recent urban transition has put substantial stress on energy requirements and both the above and below ground environments. As part of the “Urban Subsurface Environments” project at RIHN (M. Taniguchi, Project Leader), we have been investigating the relationships and interactions between subterranean environments (e.g., groundwater) and coastal marine environments. Fluxes of the inorganic nitrogen and phosphate from subterranean sources into waterways around Bangkok and Manila were shown to be orders of magnitude higher than in more pristine environments. Such impacts could be responsible for changes in the biogeochemistry of the coastal marine environment (red tides, etc.).
An interesting, and unexpected, result has arisen from our survey data from the canals around Bangkok. There appears to be preferential seepage of groundwater around temples (“Wats” in Thai) into these waterways. We will speculate on possible reasons for this “temple-groundwater” relationship.