PRIORITIES OF GLOBAL CHANGE AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF REMOTE-SENSING IN JAPAN

A survey has been made of basic environmental problems and priorities of global change in the context of the biotic regulation of the enviro nment. The recent history of the development of satellite remote sensi ng has been considered and illustrated by some results in the fields o f meteorology and oceanography. Emphasis has been made on the launch o f ADEOS (Midori) satellite which took place on 17 August 1996. The sci entific programme and instrumentation developed for the Advanced Earth Observing Satellite-II (ADEOS-II), to be launched in 1999, have been discussed in the context of previous efforts and future research in th e fields of global change, with relevance to problems such as global c limate change (with special emphasis on the global energy and water cy cles), the global carbon cycle (respectively, marine and terrestrial b iosphere dynamics), high altitude environmental dynamics, natural cala mities (earthquakes, tsunami volcanic eruptions etc.) and other enviro nmental problems.