Masaki Kanao

Masaki Kanao has been chiefly interested in Earth's evolution from geophysical data, particularly by seismological studies. Polar regions, both the Arctic and the Antarctic, have been investigated by available seismological methods such as using passive and active sources. He also interested in present status on the structure, dynamics and past tectonics of the continental lithosphere, derived from field surveys and computer sciences. Antarctic continent, once as a member of Gondwana super-continent, is a main target field to reveal lithospheric evolution in the Earth's history.

He has been managing the seismic observations of the Japanese Antarctic permanent station, the Syowa Station of East Antarctica, and surrounding continental margin area of Western Enderby Land - Eastern Dronning Maud Land. In order to maintain continuous monitoring observations of the broadband and short-period seismometers, he has been obliged in advancing the data acquisition and transmission system by satellite communication. At the International Polar Year (IPY), he participated the United States Antarctic Program (USAP) to attend the big project named AGAP (the Antarctic Gamburtsev Province), with deploying many seismographs on the wide area of Antarctic ice sheet.

In recent years, he has been engaged in several international cooperative initiatives in Siberian region, Arctic Eurasia, by use of seismic observations with Russian Academy of Science. He has also involved in the Greenland Ice Sheet Monitoring Network (GLISN) in order to detect and minor the glacial earthquake activities associated with global warming in the Arctic. These several investigations and observations in the Arctic, together with Antarctic surveys, have significant contribution to the development of global Earth sciences, Federation of Digital Seismological Network (FDSN) and International Lithospheric Program (ILP), of the IASPEI.

Data management issues for the retrieved data from both polar regions for all science branches are a part of his tasks as a staff of Polar Environment Data Science Center (PEDSC). He has been a member of Standing Committee on Antarctic Data Management (SCADM) under the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) of ICSU, as well as the IPY data committee under ICSU/WMO Joint Committee. He organized the Polar Data Forum on October 2013, at Ueno Tokyo, in collaboration with SCAR, IASC and the World Data System under ICSU.