• Journal of the Korean Institute of Landscape Architecture
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• v.49 no.4
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• pp.64-73
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• 2021

The purpose of this study is to present a method to assess the landscape aesthetic value of Bukhansan National Park using geotagged images that have been shared on social media sites. The method presented in this study consisted mainly of collecting geotagged image data, identifying landscape images, and analyzing the cumulative visibility by applying a target probability index. Ramblr is an application that supports outdoor activities with many users in Korea, from which a total of 110,954 geotagged images for Bukhansan National Park were collected and used to assess the landscape aesthetics. The collected geotagged images were interpreted using the Google Vision API, and were subsequently were divided into 11 landscape image types and 9 non-landscape image types through cluster analysis. As a result of analyzing the landscape types of Bukhansan National Park based on the extracted landscape images, landscape types related to topographical characteristics, such as peaks and mountain ranges, accounted for the largest portion, and forest landscapes, foliage landscapes, and waterscapes were also commonly found as major landscape types. In the derived landscape aesthetic value map, the higher the elevation and slope, the higher the overall landscape aesthetic value, according to the proportion and characteristics of these major landscape types. However, high landscape aesthetic values were also confirmed in some areas of lowlands with gentle slopes. In addition, the Bukhansan area was evaluated to have higher landscape aesthetics than the Dobongsan area. Despite the high elevation and slope, the Dobongsan area had a relatively low landscape aesthetic value. This shows that the aesthetic value of the landscape is strongly related not only to the physical environment but also to the recreational activities of visitors who are viewing the scenery. In this way, the landscape aesthetics assessment using the cumulative visibility of geotagged images is expected to be useful for planning and managing the landscape of Bukhansan National Park in the future, through allowing the geographical understanding of the landscape values based on people's perceptions and the identification of the regional deviations.

• The Sea:JOURNAL OF THE KOREAN SOCIETY OF OCEANOGRAPHY
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.263-276
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• 2021

Marine benthic organisms have been used as the indicators for the environment assessment and recently considered as a very important component in the biodiversity and ecosystem restoration. In Korean waters, the quantitative data on marine benthos was used as one of major components for the marine pollution assessment for 50 years since 1970s. The species identification which is an important factor for the quantitative biological data was mainly performed by the marine benthic ecologists. This leads to the deterioration of the data quality on marine benthos from the misidentication of major taxonomic groups due to the lack of taxonomic expertise in Korea. This taxonomic problem has not been solved until now and remains in most data from national research projects on the marine ecosystems in Korean waters. Here we introduce the quality assurance and control (QA/QC) system for the marine biological data in UK, that is, NMBAQC (Northeast Atlantic Marine Biological Analytic and Quality Control) Scheme which has been performed by private companies to solve similar species identification problems in UK. This scheme asks for all marine laboratories which want to participate to any national monitoring programs in UK to keep their identification potency at high level by the internal quality assurance systems and provides a series of taxonomic workshops and literature to increase their capability. They also performs the external quality control for the marine laboratories by performing the Ring Test using standard specimens on various faunal groups. In the case of Korea, there are few taxonomic expertise in two existing national institutions and so they can't solve the taxonomic problems in marine benthic fauna data. We would like to provide a few necessary suggestions to solve the taxonomic problems in Korean marine biological data in short-terms and long-terms: (1) the identification of all dominant species in marine biological data should be confirmed by taxonomic expertise, (2) all the national research programs should include taxonomic experts, and (3) establishing a private company, like the Korea marine organism identification association (KMOIA), which can perform the QA/QC system on the marine organisms and support all Korean marine laboratories by providing taxonomic literature and species identification workshops to enhance their potency. The last suggestion needs more efforts and time for the establishment of that taxonomic company by gathering the detailed contents and related opinions from diverse stakeholders in Korea.

• Clean Technology
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.24-31
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• 2022

Petroleum-based plastics are used for various purposes and pose a significant threat to the earth's environment and ecosystem. Many efforts have been taken globally in different areas to find alternatives. As part of these efforts, this study manufactured alginate-based polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) blended films by casting from an aqueous solution prepared by mixing 10 wt% petroleum-based PVA with biodegradable, marine biomass-derived alginate. Glutaraldehyde was used as a cross-linking agent, and cardanol, an alkyl phenol-based bio-oil extracted from cashew nut shell, was added in the range of 0.1 to 2.0 wt% to grant antibacterial activity to the films. FTIR and TGA were performed to characterize the manufactured blended films, and the tensile strength, degree of swelling, and antibacterial activity were measured. Results obtained from the FTIR, TGA, and tensile strength test showed that alginate, the main component, was well distributed in the PVA by forming a matrix phase. The brittleness of alginate, a known weakness as a single component, and the low thermal durability of PVA were improved by cross-linking and hydrogen bonding of the functional groups between alginate and PVA. Addition of cardanol to the alginate-based PVA blend significantly improved the antibacterial activity against S. aureus and E. coli. The antibacterial performance was excellent with a death rate of 98% or higher for S. aureus and about 70% for E. coli at a contact time of 60 minutes. The optimal antibacterial activity of the alginate-PVA blended films was found with a cardanol content range between 0.1 to 0.5 wt%. These results show that cardanol-containing alginate-PVA blended films are suitable for use as various antibacterial materials, including as food packaging.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.38 no.3
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• pp.265-282
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• 2022

Sea surface temperature (SST) is a factor that greatly influences ocean circulation and ecosystems in the Earth system. As global warming causes changes in the SST near the Korean Peninsula, abnormal water temperature phenomena (high water temperature, low water temperature) occurs, causing continuous damage to the marine ecosystem and the fishery industry. Therefore, this study proposes a methodology to predict the SST near the Korean Peninsula and prevent damage by predicting abnormal water temperature phenomena. The study area was set near the Korean Peninsula, and ERA5 data from the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) was used to utilize SST data at the same time period. As a research method, Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) algorithm specialized for time series data prediction among deep learning models was used in consideration of the time series characteristics of SST data. The prediction model predicts the SST near the Korean Peninsula after 1- to 7-days and predicts the high water temperature or low water temperature phenomenon. To evaluate the accuracy of SST prediction, Coefficient of determination (R²), Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE), and Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE) indicators were used. The summer (JAS) 1-day prediction result of the prediction model, R²=0.996, RMSE=0.119℃, MAPE=0.352% and the winter (JFM) 1-day prediction result is R²=0.999, RMSE=0.063℃, MAPE=0.646%. Using the predicted SST, the accuracy of abnormal sea surface temperature prediction was evaluated with an F1 Score (F1 Score=0.98 for high water temperature prediction in summer (2021/08/05), F1 Score=1.0 for low water temperature prediction in winter (2021/02/19)). As the prediction period increased, the prediction model showed a tendency to underestimate the SST, which also reduced the accuracy of the abnormal water temperature prediction. Therefore, it is judged that it is necessary to analyze the cause of underestimation of the predictive model in the future and study to improve the prediction accuracy.

• Economic and Environmental Geology
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• v.54 no.6
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• pp.717-731
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• 2021

We analyzed the characteristics of the habitat environment for the Seonam study area in Ulsan, the southern shore of the East Sea using bathymetry and seafloor environment data. The depth of the study area ranges from about 0 m to 23 m. In the west of the study area, the water depth is shallow with a gentle slope, and the water depth becomes deeper with a steep slope in the east. Due to the right-lateral strike-slip faults located in the continental margin of the East Sea, the fracture surfaces of the seabed rocks are mainly in the N-S direction, which is similar to the direction of the strike faults. Three seafloor types (conglomeratic-grained sandy, coasre-graiend sandy, fine-grained sandy) and rocky bottom area have been classified according to the analyses of the bathymerty, seafloor image, and surface sediment data. The rocky bottom areas are mainly distributed around Seaoam and in the northern and southern coastal area. But the intermediate zone between Seonam and coastal area has no rocky bottom. This intermediate area is expected to have active sedimentation as seawater way. The sandy sediments are widely distributed throughout the study area. Underwater images and UAV images show that Cnidarians, Brachiopods, Mollusks are mostly dominant in the shallow habitat and various Nacellidae, Mytilidae live on the intertidal zone around Seonam. Annelida and Arthropod are dominant in the sandy sediments. The distribution of marine organism in the study area might be greatly influenced by the seafloor type, the composition and particle size distribution of the seafloor sediments. The analysis of habitat environment mapping with bathymetry, seafloor data and underwater images is supposed to contribute to the study of the structure and function of marine ecosystem.

• Korean Journal of Environment and Ecology
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• v.36 no.3
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• pp.327-337
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• 2022

Ecological restoration is considered a good means to prevent biodiversity loss in terms of the ecosystem's health and sustainability. However, there are difficulties in putting it into practice as there is no comprehensive and objective standard for the selection of plant species, such as environmental, ecological factors, and restoration goal setting. Therefore, this study developed an evaluation index necessary for selecting plant species for restoration using the Delphi method that synthesizes the opinions of the expert group. A survey with 38 questionnaires was conducted twice for experts in ecological restoration, etc., and the importance and priority of evaluation indicators were analyzed by dividing the restoration targets into inland and island regions. The result of the importance analysis showed that "native plants" had the highest average of 4.9 among the evaluation indices in both inland and island regions, followed by "seed security", "propagation", and "root growth rate". In the inland region, the index priority was analyzed in the order of "native plants", "appearance frequency", "root growth rate", "distribution range", and "seed security" in the island region, it was analyzed in the order of "native plants", "root growth rate", "appearance frequency", "distribution range", and "tolerance", showing slight differences between the two indicators. As a result of the importance and priority indicator analysis, we set the mean importance and priority of 4.1 and 2.9, respectively, in the inland region and 4.2 and 2.9, respectively, in the island region. As for the criteria of selecting plant species for ecological restoration, the "native plants" had the highest importance and priority. "Seed securing", 'viability", "topography", "proliferation", "tolerance", "soil conditions", "growth characteristics", "early succession", "distribution range", "appearance frequency", and "germination rate" were classified into subgroups of low importance and priority. The lowest indicators were "final stage of succession", "transition period", 'transition stage", "root", "reproduction", "soil", "appearance", "technology", "landscape", "climate", and "germination rate". We expected that the findings through objective verification in this study would be used as evaluation indicators for selecting native plant species for ecological restoration.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.16 no.6
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• pp.131-144
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• 2021

The organizational ambidexterity is an organizational strategy designed to pursue exploration activities to seize new opportunities and exploitation activities to efficiently use resources. Most of these ambidextrous structures have been studied for large corporations with slack resources, and there are still not many studies on the necessity of an ambidextrous structure for startups with relatively low-level resources. However, recently, the startup ecosystem is being advanced globally, and the amount of VC investment is rapidly increasing. This is a time when a lot of venture fund is invested in startups and a startup-friendly environment for rapid growth is created. This is the time to discuss the necessity and applicability of an ambidextrous organizational structure for startups. Therefore, this study conducted a hypothesis test whether the importance and necessity of balance that startups solving market problems with new ideas and utilizing accumulated resources have. To conduct this study, we analyzed 140 startups data gathered from the survey and the moderation effect was also analyzed. As a result of the study, it was verified that the balance of startup exploration and exploitation had a significant effect on startup performance, and the moderating effect of environmental dynamics was found to have a significant effect on the relationship with non-financial performance. Therefore, for startups with insufficient resources, it was concluded that the surplus resources generated in the process of a firm's growth should be effectively utilized and the balance between exploration and exploitation should be balanced from the initial stage of searching for a new business. In other words, it was confirmed that it is important for continuous growth and survival to seek the structure of an ambidextrous organization in order to internalize a mechanism that enables startups to pursue both effectiveness and efficiency in the long term. This study suggests a strategic direction for the growth of startups from the perspective of organizational structure. We expect that this meaningful results on the relationship between the ambidextrous capabilities of startups and performance contribute to the growth of startups in the rapidly growing startup venture environment.

• Journal of Life Science
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• v.32 no.7
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• pp.578-587
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• 2022

Korea, as the world's 7^th largest emitter of greenhouse gases, has raised the national greenhouse gas reduction target as international regulations have been strengthened. As it is possible to utilize coastal and marine ecosystems as important nature-based solutions (NbS) for implementing climate change mitigation or adaptation plans, the blue carbon ecosystem is now receiving attention. Blue carbon refers to carbon that is deposited and stored for a long period after carbon dioxide (CO₂) is absorbed as biomass by coastal ecosystems or oceanic ecosystems through photosynthesis. Currently, there are only three blue carbon ecosystems officially recognized by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC): mangroves, salt marshes, and seagrasses. However, the results of new research on the high CO₂ sequestration and storage capacity of various new blue carbon sinks, such as seaweeds, microalgae, coral reefs, and non-vegetated tidal flats, have been continuously reported to the academic community recently. The possibility of IPCC international accreditation is gradually increasing through scientific verification related to calculations. In this review, the current status and potential value of seaweeds, seagrass fields, and non-vegetated tidal flats, which are sources of blue carbon on the east coast, are discussed. This paper confirms that seaweed resources are the most effective NbS in the East Sea of Korea. In addition, we would like to suggest the direction of research and development (R&D) and utilization so that new blue carbon sinks can obtain international IPCC certification in the near future.

• Korean Journal of Environment and Ecology
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• v.36 no.5
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• pp.481-495
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• 2022

This study was designed to identify the actual state of naturalized plants and invasive alien species that cause disturbances to the ecosystem, plants which are introduced after forest restoration, and explore the implications resulting from the project. Onsite examination included 29 sites which have been subjected to forest restoration by the Korea Forest Service. Once these were chosen, activity took place twice a year in the spring (May-June) and in the summer (August-September) in 2020 and 2021. Areas not relevant to the project sites were excluded from this activity so that we could identify the plants that could be understood to have been introduced or brought into the site after the actual forest restoration. And the correlation was analyzed, between the naturalized flora within the project sites and the working types applied to the site through confirmation of completion of the restoration project. The naturalized plants appearing on the entire site cover a total of 109 taxa, which includes 29 families, 80 genera, 108 species and 1 subspecies, while invasive plants included 3 families, 7 genera and 8 species. The number of classifications and the naturalization rate gradually decreased over time, after the project. While there was no significant difference between the number of classification groups and the naturalization rate for naturalized plants between project sites, given the number of taxa of naturalized plants, organized by type of damage, there were relatively more naturalized plants that appeared in the severed section of the Baekdudaegan Mountain Range, as well as at quarry and facility sites. Seeding apparently results in naturalization rates as high as 15.545%, on average, based on comparisons of naturalization rates by sowing, seeding, planting, herb planting, and sod pitching channels, all of these being methods of vegetation for planting/greening of bareland and slopes within the project areas. With no seeding, it was 9.167%, higher than the average. As for other vegetation, there was no significant difference depending on application of the working type. This means that unlike the plants subjected to planting, the working type of seed planting which makes it difficult to identify whether a certain plant is a naturalized plant greatly affects the introduction of naturalized plants to the restoration sites, even when using herb planting and sod pitching to control plants and results. Therefore the study suggests that there be inspection by experts of seeds when sowing within restoration sites. The results of this study suggest good practices that will help to direct effective vegetation restoration and follow-up management.

• Korean Journal of Environment and Ecology
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• v.36 no.4
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• pp.390-401
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• 2022

This study investigated the characteristics of fish communities and inhabiting status of endangered species in the Bukcheon (Stream) of Seoraksan National Park, Korea from April to September 2020. A total of 4,356 fish of 7 families and 22 species were collected from 17 survey stations during the survey period. The dominant species was Zacco koreanus (relative abundance, 41.8%), and subdominant species was Rhynchocypris kumgangensis (relative abundance, 15.1%), followed by Pungtungia herzi (10.1%), Pseudopungtungia tenuicorpa (5.0%), Coreoleuciscus splendidus (4.1%), Zacco platypus (3.8%), Microphysogobio longidorsalis (3.5%), and Hemibarbus mylodon (2.2%). Among the fish species collected, 14 species (63.6%) were identified as Korean endemic species. There was one natural monument species (Hemibarbus mylodon), and four species of class II endangered wildlife that were designated by the Ministry of Environment (Acheilognathus signifer, Pseudopungtungi tenuicorpa, Gobiobotia brevibarba, and Brachymystax lenok tsinlingensis). Among the four species of class II endangered wildlife, B. lenok tsinlingensis inhabited in the upper stream, and A. signifer, P. tenuicorpa and G. brevibarba inhabited mainly in the middle-lower stream. Also, P. tenuicorpa, H. mylodon, and B. lenok tsinlingensis were inhabited in large numbers. Additionally, two cold-water fish species (R. kumgangensis and B. lenok tsinlingensis) and one landlocked species (B. lenok tsinlingensis) were collected. According to the results of cluster analysis, the dominance index decreased from upstream to downstream, but the diversity, evenness, and richness index increased; the cluster structure was divided into the uppermost, upstream, midstream, and downstream. The water quality of Bukcheon was evaluated as good overall since the river health (index of biological integrity) evaluated using fish was evaluated as very good (11 stations), good (2 stations), and normal (4 stations). However, river repair work was being carried out in some areas and some wastewater was flowing in from the midstream, therefore, supplementary measures to preserve fish habitats are required.