Understanding people’s actions and local knowledge is important to consider the nature of their relationship with the global environment. For example, the Chinese Loess Plateau has been facing land degradation, resulting in food shortages, poverty, and disasters. Although the world’s largest afforestation project with grazing prohibition has been underway here since the end of the 20th century, new challenges have emerged as ecological restoration has altered the rural environments. Today, I monitor social transformation in this area following its afforestation, and I am considering the development of a sustainable society here in terms of the residents’ livelihoods and food supply.
I am working to restore Southeast Asia and China's natural and cultural landscapes in a focused, quantitative manner. This effort aims to reconstruct modern Asian history concerning the natural environment and disasters while contributing to disaster risk reduction policies, ecosystem conservation, and climate change adaptation. To achieve this, I collect declassified US reconnaissance satellite images and aerial photographs, Soviet military topographic maps, historical maps created by former colonial governments, and local disaster losses and damages data while conducting GIS spatial analysis. This initiative is undertaken in collaboration with US National Archives, National Research and Innovation Agency of Indonesia, and various local universities.
I also participate in the Japan Science and Technology Agency project “Solution-Driven Co-creative R&D Program for SDGs,” Tohoku University's Core Research Cluster for Disaster Science, the Global Centre for Disaster Statistics, and the Co-Creation Center for Disaster Resilience. To reduce social vulnerability in each region, I engage in problem-solving interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research in collaboration with governments and residents.
Additionally, I have authored a geography textbook for high schools in Japan and have participated in discussions at the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification and the UN Global Platform for DRR.
Hara, Y. et al. (2025). The “fallacy of composition” as an ethical challenge facing scientific research in disaster-affected areas: The 2024 Noto Peninsula Earthquake and Tsunami. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 119, 105359. doi: 10.1016/j.ijdrr.2025.105359
Hara, Y. (2022a). Restoration of the distribution of pit-type yaodong dwellings in the 1970s using US military reconnaissance satellite images in Luoyang Basin, China. Journal of Arid Land Studies, 30(S): pp.253-257. doi: 10.14976/jals.32.S_253
Hara, Y. (2022b). Foxtail-millet production in Yu County near Beijing, Hebei Province, China: Field observations in summer, 2019. Millet Research, 37, pp.12-20. (in Japanese with English abstract)
Hara, Y. (2021). Development and Issues of Integrated Rice-Aquaculture Farming and Research Trends in China．E-journal GEO, 16(1), pp.70-86. doi: 10.4157/ejgeo.16.70. (in Japanese with English abstract)
Hara, Y. et al. (2017). Competitive Edge of Riverbank Villages and Problems of Hilly Villages in the Rural Loess Plateau of China: Using a Statistical Table of Wucangbao Township, Wuqi County, Shaanxi Province. Geographical Review of Japan, 90A(4)，pp.363-375．doi: 10.4157/grj.90.363. (in Japanese with English abstract)