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Sugai Lab
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The lab explores how the natural environment has changed and how humans have been involved, using landforms and sediments.
AboutAbout the lab
Reading environmental change recorded in landforms.
The Sugai Lab (Natural Environment Dynamics) studies how natural environments such as landforms, climate, water, and vegetation have changed, and how these changes relate to human activity.
The natural environment has changed in complex ways, as short-term changes caused by human activity have been superimposed on long-term natural variations.
The lab analyzes geological and geomorphological materials as well as archaeological materials in detail, and places environmental change within the history of the Earth.
Based on these results, the lab aims to develop approaches for improving and conserving the natural environment.
Key terms
- Sea level
- Sea level: the height of the sea surface relative to the land. Sea level falls during glacial periods and rises during interglacial periods.
- Boring (drilling)
- Boring (drilling): a survey method in which a narrow hole is drilled into the ground and underground strata are extracted as rod-shaped samples (cores).
- Active fault
- Active fault: a fault that has moved repeatedly in recent geological time and may move again in the future, causing earthquakes.
ResearchResearch themes
The lab reconstructs the history of changes in the geosphere environment and uses it to predict future environmental change. By conducting field surveys and analyzing cores obtained by boring, it reconstructs sea-level, riverbed, and crustal changes over the past one million years.
*Illustrative imageChanges in mountain landforms
Using topographic measurements and field surveys, the lab investigates how mountain landforms change over timescales of 100,000 years through uplift and erosion. It examines which parts of mountain slopes become unstable and more easily eroded as valleys grow.
*Illustrative imageClimate and sea-level change and river landforms
Through analysis of sediments collected by deep boring and geomorphological surveys, the lab investigates how climate, sea-level, and crustal changes have affected sediment movement and landforms in river basins. It seeks to quantitatively evaluate the effects of glacial and interglacial periods, which have repeated roughly every 100,000 years.
*Illustrative imageInvestigating past great earthquakes from active faults
This research reconstructs the timing and magnitude of past great earthquakes through trench surveys that excavate active faults and through core sampling, with the aim of contributing to long-term earthquake forecasting. The lab has studied the North Anatolian Fault in Turkey and the Yoro fault system in Japan.
MembersFaculty
The Sugai Lab consists of faculty members, doctoral and master's students, and visiting collaborative researchers.As of 2025
- ProfessorToshihiko SugaiPublications ↗
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Report an errorAbout the images
The top and research theme images are illustrative and were not taken at the lab. They are cropped from Wikimedia Commons images. Cropped CC BY-SA images are provided under the same CC BY-SA license as the original (version shown on each line).
- Top image: “Aerial view of the Nobi Plain with Kiso Three Rivers” Oita trip / CC BY-SA 3.0 (cropped)
- Changes in mountain landforms: “Akaishi Mountains from Mount Kengyo” Alpsdake / CC0 (cropped)
- Climate and sea-level change and river landforms: “River terraces, Numata, Gunma, Japan” Batholith / Public domain (cropped)
- Investigating past great earthquakes from active faults: “Gomura Fault Ikunouchi Site B” さか
おり / CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)
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