Dr Ryusuke Hatano is a professor of Soil Science in the Division of Environmental Resources, Research faculty of Agriculture, Hokkaido University. He graduated from the Department of Agricultural Chemistry, Faculty of Agriculture, Hokkaido University in 1978 and he obtained his doctoral degree from the Division of Agricultural Chemistry of the same university in 1986. He contributed to the Department of Soil Science and Geology, Wageningen Agricultural University, the Netherlands for 10 months in 1992 as a visiting researcher; and he worked for evaluating a bypass flow in soil by applying a fractal dimension theory to the image of pore structure. Since 1995, Dr Hatano has been in charge of the Soil Science Laboratory at Hokkaido University. He has worked for various international joint research projects related to nutrient cycling in ecosystems, nutrient discharge to streams, and greenhouse gas emissions from soil to atmosphere in East Siberia, South China, Japan, and tropical peatlands in Indonesia and Malaysia. These projects are closely related to sustainable de and Dr Hatano believes that a comparative study based on field monitoring is required for the achievement of sustainable development. He is interested in the study on nitrogen and carbon dynamics in a regional as well as basin scale which are combined with nitrogen and carbon budgets estimated from statistical data on agriculture. He has published more than 60 papers in peer reviewed Journals related to the sciences of agriculture, environment and soil. He is a member of the Editorial Board of the Soil Science and Plant Nutrition and the International Agrophysics. Dr Hatano would like to contribute in making an IUSS report on soil carbon budgets including CO2 and non-CO2 greenhouse gas emissions in different ecosystems in each country. The report will be prepared in collaboration with soil scientists all over the world. He believes that the report will be an important reference for estimation and mitigation of agricultural greenhouse gas emissions, for understanding the greenhouse gas budgets in various ecosystems, and for validating model simulation. The report will incorporate a thorough discussion on the gas emission monitoring methods, definition of ecosystems and regions, and the mitigation strategies. Making a list of mitigation strategies may be very complex, but it will be the most important issue in the proposed report. Soil has important roles on food production and environment stability. Balancing the utilization and conservation of soils is an ideal concept for the sustainable development. However, different countries have different climate, ecosystems and soils. Therefore, each country has its own agricultural practices inevitably, and the mitigation strategies would have been different in different countries. But essential agricultural technologies such as application of fertilizer, agricultural chemicals, irrigation, tillage and land use conversion for controlling nutrients, pests, weeds, water, and temperature in soils, and helping germination and root penetration are similar in different countries. Therefore, a balanced use of such technologies is required for maintaining soil functions for a sustainable food production in each country. Furthermore, a mitigation strategy is determined by the combination of technologies. By comparing the status quo of the greenhouse gas emission budgets and mitigation strategies in different regions, new ideas for improvement of monitoring and mitigation will be expected. Dr Hatano would like to contribute in mounting up the global knowledge in the territories of soil science.