• Korean journal of applied entomology
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• v.46 no.3
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• pp.335-341
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• 2007

The main habitats of diving beetles in agricultural ecosystems were identified as ponds, irrigation channels, and reservoirs, where the water system is maintained throughout the year. Four species, Cybister japonicus, Cybister brevis, Hyphydrus japonicus and Noterus angustulus, were selected as biological indicators which can be used to evaluate the healthiness of the agricultural ecosystem. The species number of 4 indicator species, the species number of diving beetle species, and the diversity index were used as factors for environmental evaluation. The evaluation was classified into grades $I{\sim}IV$. The non-fertilizer and non-pesticide agricultural practicing area and the sustainable agricultural practicing area were evaluated as grades $I{\sim}II$, and the general agricultural area to be relatively fine with a grade II. However, the analysis indicated the agricultural areas near a residential area and an industrial complex to be poor with a grade of IV, suggesting that immediate improvement in the agricultural environment is needed.

• Journal of Ecology and Environment
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• v.48 no.1
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• pp.32-48
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• 2024

Background: Longitudinal connectivity in river systems strongly affects biological components related to ecosystem functioning, thereby playing an important role in shaping local biodiversity and ecosystem health. Environmental DNA (eDNA)-based metabarcoding has an advantage of enabling to sensitively diagnose the presence/absence of species, becoming an efficient/effective approach for studying the community structure of ecosystems. However, little attention has been paid to eDNA-based biomonitoring for river systems, particularly for assessing the river longitudinal connectivity. In this study, by using eDNA we analyzed and compared species diversity and composition among artificial barriers to assess the longitudinal connectivity of the fish community along down-, mid- and upstream in the Hotancheon from the Geum River basin. Moreover, we investigated temporal variation in eDNA fish community structure and species diversity according to season. Results: The results of species detected between eDNA and conventional surveys revealed higher sensitivity for eDNA and 61% of species (23/38) detected in both methods. The results showed that eDNA-based fish community structure differs from down-, mid- and upstream, and species diversity decreased from down to upstream regardless of season. We found that there was generally higher species diversity at the study sites in spring (a total number of species across the sites [n] = 29) than in autumn (n = 27). Nonmetric multidimensional scaling and heatmap analyses further suggest that there was a tendency for community clusters to form in the down-, mid- and upstream, and seasonal variation in the community structure also existed for the sites. Dominant species in the Hotancheon was Rhynchocypris oxycephalus (26.07%) regardless of season, and subdominant species was Nipponocypris koreanus (16.50%) in spring and Odontobutis platycephala (15.73%) in autumn. Artificial barriers appeared to negatively affect the connectivity of some fish species of high mobility. Conclusions: This study attempts to establish a biological monitoring system by highlighting the versatility and power of eDNA metabarcoding in monitoring native fish community and further evaluating the longitudinal connectivity of river ecosystems. The results of this study suggest that eDNA can be applied to identify fish community structure and species diversity in river systems, although some shortcomings remain still need to be resolved.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Marine Environment & Energy
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.227-235
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• 2005

This study aimed at suggesting management policy directions for the uninhabited islands of Korea which are national land resources with economic potential for tourism and development and strategic value for boundary delineation of territorial waters and exclusive economic zone as well as their unique ecological status. Review of existing management arrangements related to the uninhabited islands revealed six management issues to be addressed: insufficient data and their low reliability, lack of management policy directions, increase in ecosystem deterioration and perturbation by human activities, lack of policy measures for meeting utilization and development demands, weak management base with insufficient personnel and budget, and legal measures not taking Into account their unique ecological and socioeconomic characteristics. The management policy directions to improve the management of the uninhabited islands of Korea include management directions and strategies, and suggestions for legal improvement. Considering the unique ecological value of the uninhabited islands, management directions suggested are anti-degradation in which current and future demands for their utilization and development do not degrade the ecological potential of the uninhabited islands and integration in which land and sea areas are managed as an integrated management unit. Four strategies proposed to follow the management directions are enhancement of the knowledge base through a comprehensive survey, development and legislation of guidelines for the rational management of utilization and development demands, establishment of the comprehensive island debris collection and disposal system, and enhancement of management capacity. Legal improvement for the effective implementation of the management policy directions should include comprehensive uninhabited islands survey, legal utilization restraints and management guidelines based on classification of the islands, management boundary, and improvement of regulations on designated islands.

• Journal of Ecology and Environment
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• v.31 no.3
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• pp.233-241
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• 2008

Functional feeding groups (FFGs) of benthic macroinvertebrates are guilds of invertebrate taxa that obtain food in similar ways, regardless of their taxonomic affinities. They can represent a heterogeneous assemblage of benthic fauna and may indicate disturbances of their habitats. The proportion of different groups can change in response to disturbances that affect the food base of the system, thereby offering a means of assessing disruption of ecosystem functioning. In this study, we used benthic macroinvertebrate communities collected at 650 sites of 23 different water types in the province of Overijssel, The Netherlands. Physical and chemical environmental factors were measured at each sampling site. Each taxon was assigned to its corresponding FFG based on its food resources. A multilayer perceptron (MLP) using a backpropagation algorithm, a supervised artificial neural network, was applied to evaluate the influence of environmental variables to the FFGs of benthic macroinvertebrates through a sensitivity analysis. In the evaluation of input variables, the sensitivity analysis with partial derivatives demonstrates the relative importance of influential environmental variables on the FFG, showing that different variables influence the FFG in various ways. Collector-filterers and shredders were mainly influenced by $Ca^{2+}$ and width of the streams, and scrapers were influenced mostly with $Ca^{2+}$ and depth, and predators were by depth and pH. $Ca^{2+}$ and depth displayed relatively high influence on all four FFGs, while some variables such as pH, %gravel, %silt, and %bank affected specific groups. This approach can help to characterize community structure and to ecologically assess target ecosystems.

• Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.11 no.5
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• pp.277-284
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• 2006

The genetic toxicity of environmental pollutants, namely, nonylphenol (NP), bisphenol A (BPA) and chloropyriphos (CP) was investigated in aquatic sentinel species, freshwater crustacean, Daphnia magna, and larva of aquatic midge, Chironomus tentans, using Comet assay. Physiological effect of such pollutants was also investigated by studying the specimens' rates of reproduction, growth and survival. Acute toxicity results showed that, as expected, Daphnia was more sensitive than Chironomus to chemical exposure. The order of acute toxicity was CP > NP > BPA in D. magna and NP > CP > BPA in C. tentans. BPA may exert a genotoxic effect on D. magna and C. tentans, given that DNA strand breaks increased in both species exposed to this compound, whereas NP- and CP-induced DNA damage occurred only in C. tentans. In vivo genotoxic data obtained in aquatic sentinel species could provide valuable information for freshwater quality monitoring. The experiments with NP-exposed D. magna showed that the pollutant has long-term effects on reproduction, whereas no short-term effect on DNA integrity was found, being an example of a false-negative result from the biomarkers perspective. This result could be interpreted that other mechanism than genetic alteration might be involved in NP-induced reproduction failure in D. magna. False-positive results from the genotoxic biomarker obtained in BPA-exposed D. magna and in NP-exposed C. tentans make it difficult to use DNA integrity as an early warning biomarker. However, as the mere presence of genotoxic compounds, which are potentially carcinogenic, is of high concern to human and ecosystem health, it could also be important to rapidly and effectively detect genotoxic compounds in the aquatic system in ways that do not necessarily accompany a higher level of alteration. Considering the potential of D. magna and C. tentans as bioindicator species, and the importance of genotoxic biomarkers in ecotoxicity monitoring, DNA damage in these species could provide useful information for environmental risk assessment.

• Journal of The Korean Society of Agricultural Engineers
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• v.58 no.6
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• pp.93-100
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• 2016

This study conducted a quantitative assessment on the environmental flows associated with climate change in the Gosam Reservoir, Korea. The application of RCP 8.5 climate change scenario has found that the peak value of High Flow Pulses has increased by 36.0 % on average compared to historical data (2001 ~ 2010), which is likely to cause disadvantage on flood control and management but the increase in peak value is expected to make a positive impact on resolving the issue of green algal blooms, promoting vegetation in surrounding areas and encouraging spawning and providing habitats for native species by releasing a larger amount of landslides as well as organic matters than the past. However, the decreasing pattern of the peak value of High Flow Pulses is quite apparent with the trend of delay on the occurrence time of peak value, necessitating a long-term impact analysis. The peak value of Large Floods shows a clear sign of decrease against climate change scenario, which is expected to lead to changes in fish species caused by degraded quality of water and decreasing habitats. A quicker occurrence of Small Floods is also expected to make an impact on the growth cycle of aquatic plants, and the reduction in occurrence frequency of Extreme Low Flows is to contribute to increasing the population of and raising the survival rate of native fish, greatly improving the aquatic ecosystem. The results of this study are expected to be useful to establish the water environment and ecological system in adapting or responding to climate change.

• Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.341-355
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• 2004

This thesis is to analyze characteristic of sustainable development in the Nak-dong River. The results are summarized in the followings. 1) The principles which did not consider the equilibrium between development and environment, ecosystem, security. precautionary measure, equity could devise a plan, changes of economic land area, sand & gravel extractions from the riverbed, the river contamination cleanup, dam build 2) The rules which disregard polluter pay and opening participation in public affairs could input of too much province budget and manpower, project team. The measures to solve these problems could be proposed expansion of environmental infrastructure, sustainable sand & gravel extractions from the riverbed, fortifying the assistance of the residents who live in Dam construction site and the peripheral area of Dam, lower local fund rates in national projects, and the creation of management organization.

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.42 no.1
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• pp.1-8
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• 2009

In this study, based on the major activities which might have affected the ecological system of the Geum River, a conceptual model was proposed to guide scenario development for the eco-hydrological river evaluation. Also, an analysis method employing a set of models consisting, with other supporting programs, of KModSim for watershed network analysis and RAP for ecosystem analysis was developed for eco-hydrological river assessment. Then, hydrological analyses with various scenarios were conducted to examine the flow regime changes expected from the construction and operation of the Youngdam Multipurpose Dam (YMD) and Daecheong Multipurpose Dam (DMD) in the Geum River basin. The results indicated that the "Percentile 10" values for 10% exceeding time were decreased by 20.5% and 8.0% at Sutong downstream of YMD and Gongju downstream of DMD, respectively, while "Percentile 90" values for 90% exceeding time were increased by 56.3% and 340.8% at Sutong and Gongju, respectively, resulting in the reduction of the high flow variability typical for unregulated rivers in Korea. The results of eco-hydrological analyses will be presented in the following papers.

• Journal of Ecology and Environment
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• v.39 no.1
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• pp.71-80
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• 2016

The main goal of this study is to develop a multi-metric fishway assessment model (M_m-FA) and evaluate the efficiency of fishway. The M_m-FA model has three major fishway components with nine metrics: structural characteristics, hydraulic/hydrologic features, and biological attributes. The model was developed for diagnosing and assessing fishway efficiency and tested to Juksan Weir at the Yeongsan River Watershed. Structural characteristics of fishway included slope of the fishway (M₁), ratios of fishway width to stream width (M₂), and the proportion of orifice clogging and orifice size (M₃). Hydraulic/hydrologic characteristics included depth of fishway entrance head (M₄), depth of exit tail (M₅), and current velocity of inner fishway (M₆). Biological characteristics included fish species ratio of inner fishway to upper-lower weir (M₇), fish length distribution (M₈), and the proportion of migratory fish species to the total number of species (M₉). Overall, the assessment of fishway efficiency showed the total score of the M_m-FA model was 25 in the Juksan Weir, indicating "good condition" by the criteria of the five-level classification system. The M_m-FA model may be used as a key tool for the assessment of fishway efficiency, especially on the 16 weirs constructed for the "Four Rivers Restoration Project" after a partial calibration of M_m-FA model.

• Journal of Korean Society on Water Environment
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.368-378
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• 2005

Inorganic matters originated from stone quarries and manufacturing plants could alter the ecological characteristics of adjacent aquatic systems, especially the structure and function of benthic macroinvertebrate community. In such situation, the locality of stone quarry and the quantity of inorganic matters would be important factors that determined the disturbing strength to the benthic macroinvertebrate community. Locality patterns of stone quarries were classified into 3 types in relation to the stream ecosystem; stream-proximity, upstream-inclusion and tributary-inclusion type. In the result of species:abundance analysis, stone quarry B (upstream-inclusion type) showed geometric distribution, while others showed broken-stick distribution pattern. The benthic macroinvertebrate communities closer to stone quarries showed smaller species numbers and standing crops among all types of stone quarries. However the values of species evenness index were not seriously different between controls and directly affected sites. These results indicated that the effect of inorganic disturbance would differ from those of organic pollution that induced the highly dominant state occupied by tolerant species. Number of occurred species, standing crops, community indices and biotic indices indicated that the community of upstream-inclusion type was the most seriously damaged from the inorganic disturbance, and the community would be very simple and unstable. Tributary-inclusion stone quarry heavily damaged to tributary system in biologically, but influence to the main stream seemed to be depended on the scale of main stream. Among 3 types of stone quarry localities, stream-proximity type induced the least damages to benthic macroinvertebrate community, though the degrees of damage were different along with distances between stream and stone quarry.