• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.39 no.4
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• pp.528-543
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• 2004

The biogeographical approach on the species composition, distributional range, and life form of native Korean conifers suggests that the Korean Peninsula harbors 4 families 10 genera 30 species. Early-evolved conifers maintain high species diversity and broad distribution. During the glacial periods, the ranges of cold-tolerant conifers expanded, on the other hand, those of warmth-tolerant ones reduced. Presence of endemic subalpine conifers might be the result of long-term isolation of conifers on high mountains. Horizontal and vertical ranges of native Korean conifers are classified into alpine, subalpine, montane, coastal, insular and disjunctive types, and then subdivided into twelve sub-types. Typical life form of native Korean conifers is evergreen tree, blooms in spring, and fruits ripe in autumn or following autumn. Oval and elliptical seeds with wing might be beneficial for their dispersal. Further works on the migration, dispersal, genetics, ecology of native Korean conifers are required for the better understanding of the biogeography of conifers.

• Journal of the Korean Wood Science and Technology
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• v.52 no.4
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• pp.319-330
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• 2024

The present study aimed to investigate the death years of conifers to verify the time difference between landslide occurrence in 2011 and tree mortality near Chibanmok and Jangteomok shelters in the Jirisan National Park. Furthermore, abrupt growth reduction was also investigated to verify the living conditions when they were living. For the study, tree-ring analysis was conducted by selecting 14 living Abies koreana near the landslide area and 7 dead ones in the landslide area in the Chibanmok site, and 13 living conifers (7 Picea jezoensis, 5 A. koreana, and 1 Pinus koraiensis) near landslide area and 4 dead ones (2 P. jezoensis and 2 A. koreana) in landslide area in the Jangteomok site. Using the tree-ring samples from living A. koreana 137-year long chronology (1885-2021) was established for the Chibanmok site and 364- and 65-year long P. jezoensis (1658-2021) and A. koreana (1957-2021) chronologies was built for the Jangteomok site. Through the synchronization test between the tree-ring time series from dead conifers and the corresponding chronologies, it was verified that the death of conifers in the landslide areas occurred after 2011, when the landslide happened, except for only one tree. It was further verified through the abrupt growth reduction test that the growth condition of dead conifers before the landslide in 2011 was satisfactory.

• Asian Journal of Turfgrass Science
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.81-88
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• 1996

Twelve dictyostelids occurred in the southern coastal area and islands; nine species of genus Dictvostelium and three species of genus Polysphoslylium. In ten sites of evergreen-broadleaved forests, 12 species were identified and average prensent species was 6.0. D. mucoroiles, D. misutum, P. pallilum and P. violaceum were dominant species. The first dominant species was D. mucoroides. Its importance value was 55 and was much more than the others. Especially, for P. violaceum presence was 90%. It was much higher. But relative density was no more than 3%. D. minutum that was not common species had comparahly high im- portance value. In two sites of evergreen conifers, only four species occurred; D. mucoroiles, D. brefeldianum, D. capitatum and P. pallilum Average present species was 2.0. Dominant species was D. mucoroides. Average of total clones in evergreen-hroadleaved forests and evergreen conifers were irrespectively 8,608 and 9,541. As for the number of species, cellular slime molds distributed variably in evergreen-broadleaved forests than evergreen conifers.

• Mycobiology
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• v.50 no.5
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• pp.317-325
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• 2022

Endophytic fungi occupy various ecological niches, which reinforces their diversity. As few studies have investigated the endophytic fungi of alpine conifers, we focused on four species of alpine conifers in this study-Abies nephrolepis, Pinus pumila, Taxus cuspidata var. nana, and Thuja koraiensis-and examined them for endophytic fungi. A total of 108 endophytic fungi were isolated. There were four taxa in A. nephrolepis, 12 in P. pumila, 18 in T. cuspidata var. nana, and 17 in T. koraiensis; these were divided into five classes: Agaricomycetes (3.2%), Dothideomycetes (29.0%), Leotiomycetes (15.0%), Sordariomycetes (41.9%), and Orbiliomycetes (1.6%). The most prevalent fungi were Sydowia polyspora (22.7%) and Xylariaceae sp. (22.7%) in P. pumila, Phomopsis juglandina (16.1%) in T. cuspidate var. nana, and Thuja-endophytes sp. 1 (70.0%) in T. koraiensis. However, there was no dominant species growing in A. nephrolepis. Some host plants were analyzed using next-generation sequencing. We obtained 4618 reads for A. nephrolepis and 2268 reads for T. koraiensis. At the genus level, the top three endophytic fungi were Ophiostomataceae_uc (64.6%), Nectriaceae_uc (15.5%), and unclassified organism (18.0%) in A. nephrolepis and Nectriaceae_uc (41.9%), Ophiostomataceae_uc (41.8%), and Magnaporthaceae_uc (9.2%) in T. koraiensis. Our results show that there are different communities of endophytic fungi among different host plants, even if the host plants are in the same region. Such ecological niches are important in terms of the ecological restoration of alpine conifers.

• The Korean Journal of Ecology
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.201-208
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• 1986

The water status of the leaves of several evergreen plants was investigated in order to discuss the geopgraphical distribution of them. Relastionship between relative water content and water potential of the leaves showed linear decrease for evergreen conifers but exponential decrease for Korean box tree (Buxus microphylla var. koreana). On the basis of the leaf water potential, the water status of the conifers during wintering was distinctly divided into three periods; hardening, cold resistance and dehardening, but lacking in those periods for the Korean box tree, where the status continously decreased. In the cold resistance the leaf water potentials were -23 bar for both spruce (Picea jezoensis) and yew (Taxus cuspidata). From these results and threshold temperature at beginning of hardening, distribution of the conifers was explained that in order of the red pine, the Korean white pine, the yew and the spruce the distribution could be extended at higher altitudes and in more northward areas, whereas the distribution of the Korean box tree was restricted to the lowland of temperate zone.

• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.1-13
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• 1995

One of the oldest fossil of conifers and taxads in the Korean peninsula includes Elatocladus, Ullmannia, Walchia and dates back to the Permian period of the Palaeozoic era. The only conifer which successfully survived since the Cretaceous period is Pinus and still thrives in Korea. The extinction of Miocene conifers, such as Sciadopitys, Taxodiaceae, Metasequoia and Cryptomeria may due to the climatic deteriorations during the late Pleistocene period. However, the cryophilous conifers and taxads, e.g..Pinus, Juniperus, Abies, Picea, Cupressaceae, Larix and Taxus continued to exist from the Miocene to the late Pleistocene and became major vegetational elements in the mountainous areas of Korea. As the temperature ameliorates in the late Holocene period, thermophilous Pinus (Diploxylon) gradually had increased in numbers and became a dominant vegetation in the lowland and montane areas since 2,000 years B.P. in korea. Out of various Korean conifers and taxads, Pinus which surviving since the Cretaceous period of Mesozoic era, ranges spatially from southern coastal area to northern alpine belt of the Korean peninsula. Pinus which contains largest species number in conifers is one of the most well-adapted genus to the Korean environment. The next important conifer Juniperus dates back to the Miocene period of Cenozoic era and continuously maintains speciation and expansion of distributional range. Other major conifers and taxads of Korea include Picea, Abies, Lorix and Taxus. The restriction of distributional range of Cephralotaxus and Tsuga may due to the climatic deterioration during the Pleistocene period of Cenozoic era. The patterns of the temporal and spatial distribution of Korean conifers and taxads may provide invaluable informations for the better understanding of present-day distributional range and ecology.

• Journal of Environmental Science International
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• v.23 no.12
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• pp.2057-2069
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• 2014

This study was carried out to estimate the BVOCs emissions with the emission factors which reflected the native conditions of forests in Jeju Island. This study made effective use of the previous data for the weather data and the emission rate of each organic volatile component measured at 10 species of conifers and broad leaved trees. The CORINAIR method and the grid system of $1km{\times}1km$ for whole area of Jeju Island were adopted in calculating the BVOCs emission emitted from forest. The vegetation information for Jeju Island was referred to GIS and a government report. By the results of BVOCs emission for Jeju Island, the 85% of monoterpene emission was emitted from conifers and the others was from broad leaved trees. Most of monoterpene emission was attributed to Pinus thunbergii and Cryptomeria japonica. The broad leaved trees greatly contributed to the isoprene emission and Quercus serrata played a dominant role in emission of isoprene. The total amount of BVOCs emission was estimated as $3612ton\;yr^{-1}$ in Jeju Island. The 51.1% of total emission was contributed to conifers, the 44.9% to broad leaved trees, and the 4.0% to grassland. Of total emission of BVOCs, monoterpene accounted for 32.3%, isoprene for 28.0%, and OVOCs for 39.7%. The BVOCs emission estimated by this study was less than that estimated by other previous study. This means that it is important to survey the emission rate at native conditions and gather the detailed information for various species of vegetation on target region.

• The Korean Journal of Mycology
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• v.44 no.1
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• pp.51-56
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• 2016

Diverse endophytic fungi were isolated from surface-sterilized leaves of three species of conifers inhabiting various sites in Korea: Abies nephrolepis, Pinus koraiensis and Taxus cuspidate. The isolates were identified based on morphological characteristics and sequences analysis of both internal transcribed spacer and large subunit regions of rDNA. In this paper, we report on five previously unreported species of endophytic fungi isolated from conifers: Biscogniauxia maritime, Nemania diffusa, Pezicula carpinea, Phomopsis juglandina and Sydowia polyspora.

• Journal of Korean Society of Forest Science
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• v.82 no.1
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• pp.17-25
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• 1993

Tree-ring data of subalpine conifers growing in Korea were analyzed to evaluate the possibility of enhanced tree growths due to increased atmospheric carbon dioxide. A total of 64 trees of three species(Taxus cuspidata, Pinus koraiensis, Abies koreana) were sampled from three mountain ranges (Seolak, Sobaek, Chiri) at 1200~1750m(above sea level) and four chronologies were developed in spans of 209~412 years. No apparent growth increases were found in the graphs of chronologies. As comparing the growths of 1900-1949 and 1950-1989 period, only one chronology possessed higher mean growth in the post-1950 period. Growth increase found in the Pinus koraiensis chronology from Mt. Seolak was 8% but it could not be solely attributed to increased carbon dioxide concentration.

• Journal of Forest and Environmental Science
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• v.32 no.2
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• pp.113-119
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• 2016

The long lived iteroparous conifers produce male and female gametophyte for hundreds of years once they reach the reproductive stage, however, the production of seed is not frequent. This phenomenon of infrequent seed production in conifers is yet to be understood. An attempt to study this change in cone production in Cedrus deodara of Western Himalayas -a species reported to be mainly monoecious and rarely dioecious has been made. The observations recorded on selected trees of flowering/fruiting stage for four years at four different locations have shown the species to be dioecious with higher percentage of female trees during good seed year but with no definite or predictable pattern of reproduction in the trees. A decline in production of female trees was witnessed at all but one location immediately year after reaching the maximum (good seed year). The phenomenon of seed production has been observed to be cyclic and site specific. A change in the sexual behavior of the trees from male to female or vice-versa, male or female turning monoecious or vegetative and vegetative coming to reproductive was unpredictable.