• Journal of Environmental Policy
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.91-110
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• 2002

Ecosystem health assessment is an emerging concept regarded as a useful diagnostic tool for evaluating ecosystems. The stability of ecosystem is the main theme in the assessment. Generally, two components - resilience and resistance - are involved in the mechanism of ecosystem stability. In this study, relative degrees of the resistance and the resilience were quantified for most aquatic Insects Inhabiting running waters in Korea. A total of 34 groups were newly categorized based on previous studies, and a conceptual model has been produced. The model was applied for the aquatic insect communities inhabiting different streams and demonstrated that each stream ecosystem possessed different degrees of stability. This study also indicated that it was possible to compare stabilities of different ecosystems using relative degrees of resilience and resistance. Using the conceptual model, suitable conservation and management strategies could be recommended in ecological assessments. The model can be used as a stepping-stone for developing more comprehensive methodology that objectively diagnoses and evaluates the ecosystem stability.

• Journal of Korean Society on Water Environment
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• v.24 no.5
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• pp.592-597
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• 2008

Current water quality standard (WQS) in Korea is based on the protection of human health, not considering the protection of aquatic organisms. Most of chemicals can be toxic to ecological biota as well as human. Health of aquatic biota is closely related to the human health via food chain, therefore ecological risk based-WQS needs to be developed to protect the aquatic ecosystem. In this study, we selected the 31 chemicals in the Project entitled 'Development of integrated methodology for evaluation of water environment'. The methodology for calculating water quality criteria was derived from the Australian and New Zealand processes for deriving guideline trigger value for aquatic ecosystem. The available ecotoxicity data were collected from US EPA's ECOTOXicology Database (ECOTOX), TOX-2000 Database, European Chemicals Bureau (ECB)'s International Uniform Chemical Information Database (IUCLID) and Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA)'s report 'Ambient Water Quality Criteria (AWQC)'. The aquatic toxicity data for the Korean species were selected for risk assessment to reflect the Korean water environment. The monitoring values were calculated from the water quality monitoring data four main Korean rivers. We suggested the order of priorities of chemicals based on ecological risk assessment. We expect that these results can be useful information for establishing the WQS for the protection of aquatic ecosystem.

• Korean Journal of Ecology and Environment
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• v.52 no.1
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• pp.1-8
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• 2019

River water quality and organisms have a very close relationship with the human living environment and health, so it is very important to ensure and maintain the ecological integrity of the aquatic ecosystem. In that sense, benthic diatoms have relatively little mobility, can explain the effects of long-term exposed pollution sources, and are very suitable indicator organisms for river ecosystem evaluation. Diatom ecologists have been developed various diatom indices to assess water quality and stream ecosystem over the world. However, they so far have insufficient identification of taxa, are strongly regional, and are difficult to apply as they are domestically. Unfortunately, there has not been developed an independent diatom index suitable for the Korean stream. Therefore, management of water quality and aquatic ecosystem suitable for domestic rivers can be made, and development or improvement of comprehensive multivariate diatom index for the integrated assessment of water quality and aquatic ecosystem is urgently needed.

• Korean Journal of Environment and Ecology
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• v.22 no.5
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• pp.544-550
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• 2008

This study conducted a survey on the ecosystem of Wonju stream from May until November in 2004 and made an health assessment of Wonju stream using family biotic indices(FBI) and physical habitat assessment(PHA) of the aquatic insects. Through this survey, aquatic insects covering 8 orders, 37 families, 62 genuses, and 92 species were observed at 9 stations along Wonju stream. In terms of family biotic indices, it was confirmed that station 1,2 and 3 were maintaining the healthiest stream ecosystem with the value ranging from 4.55 to 4.82. In addition, station 2 was found to have the best habitat environment in the correlation between physical habitat assessment and family biotic indices with its value of 100 and 4.82, respectively. However, station 7 and 9 showed the lowest habitat environment with the value of 45, 6.17 and 45, 6.97, respectively. posing the need for improvement in PHA; further, station 7 and 9 showed inverted correlationship between PHA and FBI.

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.52 no.spc2
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• pp.777-789
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• 2019

The purpose of this study is to evaluate changes in water quality and aquatic ecosystem health by additional dam release of stream maintenance flow from multipurpose dams in Han river basin ($34,148km^2$) using SWAT (Soil and Water Assessment Tool). The period of additional release was spring (April to June) and autumn (August to October) to evaluate the changes with the data of aquatic ecosystem health survey. The amount of additional release was set proportional to the present dam release, and the maximum release amount was controlled not to exceed the officially notified stream maintenance flow from dam. The 10 percent to 50 percent additional releases showed that the stream water quality (T-N, $NH_4$, T-P, and $PO_4-P$) concentrations except $NO_3-N$ decreased in spring while increased in autumn period. Using the stream water quality results and applying with Random Forest algorithm, the grade of aquatic ecosystem health index (FAI, TDI, and BMI) was improved for both periods especially in the downstream of basin. This study showed that the additional release of stream maintenance flow was more effective in spring than autumn period for the improvement of water quality and aquatic ecosystem.

• Korean Journal of Ecology and Environment
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• v.49 no.4
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• pp.343-353
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• 2016

Oligochaetes distribute widely in freshwater ecosystem, and some species are used as bioindicators for water quality assessment because they are tolerant to organic enrichment. They are acknowledged for potential for environmental health recovery of organic polluted environment. There are a lot of studies on ecology and toxicity assessment using oligochaetes in aquatic environment. In this study, we reviewed literature on ecotoxicology of aquatic oligochaetes. We searched literature from a database 'google scholar' by using keywords such as aquatic, oligochaete, and toxicity. The literature were summarized according to publication years, species, test methods, and chemicals. We obtained 133 articles published from 1953 to 2015 from the database. Among them, 58 papers(43.6% of total) have been published in 1990s. Three species(Lumnbriculus variegatus, Tubifex tubifex, and Limnodrilus hoffmeisteri) have been used most frequently in the study. Different species displayed different toxicological responses to different toxic chemicals. The results on the ecotoxicological study with aquatic oligochaetes revealed the possibility of the development for early warning system using aquatic oligochaetes to monitor aquatic ecosystem disturbance.

• Korean Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences
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• v.56 no.4
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• pp.449-461
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• 2023

The aim of this study was to conduct an ecosystem-based fishery risk assessment of tuna fisheries in the Western Indian Ocean. We selected gillnet, purse seine, hand line, baitboat, and longline fisheries as the target fisheries method, and selected longtail tuna (Thunnus tonggol), narrow-barred Spanish mackerel (Scomberomorus commerson), kawakawa (Euthynnus affinis), skipjack tuna (Katsuwonus pelamis), yellowfin tuna (T. albacares), bigeye tuna (T. obesus), albacore tuna (T. alalunga) and swordfish (Xiphias gladius) as the target species. The risk score for the size at the first capture in sustainability objective was high, especially, for the purse seine and baitboat fisheries using the fish aggregating devices (FADs). The risk score for the bycatch in the biodiversity objective was high for the gillnet fishery, and the gillnet fisheries using FADs showed high risks for the habitat quality objective due to the loss of the fishing gears. With regards to the socio-economic benefits objective, the risk score of the sales profits was low due to high sales of the tuna fisheries. The ecosystem risk score in the Western Indian Ocean was estimated to be moderate, although management is required for some of the indicators that have high-risk scores.

• Journal of Fisheries and Marine Sciences Education
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• v.26 no.6
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• pp.1185-1192
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• 2014

Health assessment of aquatic ecosystem was investigated by using LEHA (Lentic Ecosystem Health Assessment) model method with habitat fish population structure analysis in this study. The investigation was two comparison spots (St 1; floating island, St 2; 500 m away site from st 1) in the Habcheon lake of Korea. As results, health evaluation of Habcheon lake ecosystem was fair grade of LEHA scores base on metric values in both place (30 score in st. 1 and 32 score in st. 2).

• Journal of Korean Society on Water Environment
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• v.27 no.6
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• pp.804-812
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• 2011

To prevent the overflow of various harmful chemicals, it is necessary to modify the chemical management system with an expansion to institutionally regulated substances. This modification should be preceded by selection of the priority chemicals, with a diverse chemical ranking system (CRS) applied to select the chemicals in developed countries. In Korea, a systematic CRS was used in a project related to soil and groundwater, however, it is inadequate to compare soil and groundwater CRS to that of surfacewater. In this study, a priority chemical ranking system for surfacewater was proposed through the analysis of international and domestic CRS cases. This was then applied to 161 chemicals to derive the priority list of harmful chemicals. As a result, Chemical RAnking of surFacewater polluTants (CRAFT) is presented for the protection of human health and the aquatic ecosystem from surfacewater pollutants. The components of CRAFT are the human health toxicity, aquatic ecosystem toxicity and reliability assessment factors. Three lists were derived from the 161 priority harmful chemicals for the protection of human health, aquatic ecosystem or both. It is expected that this result can be useful to prioritize harmful chemicals for the protection of human health and the aquatic ecosystem from Korean surfacewater.

• Korean Journal of Ecology and Environment
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• v.57 no.1
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• pp.51-59
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• 2024

This note summarizes the application of zooplankton indices for water quality management and estimation based on main research topics of articles focusing on wetland ecosystems, topics that are remained poorly investigated in S. Korea. The aquatic ecosystem-based consists of indices that respond to different target environmental factors, including environmental disturbance. Among the major indicator species and biota, we reviewed that management strategy for the wetland environment has to be focused more on small-sizes, in terms of zooplankton ecology and indices. The ecology of zooplankton communities in freshwater ecosystem has been the focus of an increasing number of studies since 2019, and considerable progress has been made in understanding the major mechanisms involved in regulating their abundance, diversity and spatio-temporal patterns. Even though studies on the freshwater ecosystem in Korea have a long history, a few of studies on zooplankton biota were conducted at wetlands. We suggested the candidate zooplankton indices proposed by the U.S. EPA and EU to suit Korean conditions. In the step of selecting metrics, the best available metrics are species-related variables, such as composition and abundance, as well as richness and diversity. Overall, in spite of several limitations, the development of a plankton-based multivariate assessment method in Korea wetlands is possible using mostly field research data. Later, it could be improved based on qualitative metrics on zooplankton, and with the emergence of further survey data. The present information can be used as basic information for researchers who are dealing with aquatic environments and its interaction with organisms.