• Korean Journal of Environment and Ecology
• /
• v.34 no.2
• /
• pp.170-178
• /
• 2020

There are few landscape ecological analyses of Khingan fir (Abies nephrolepis) and other habitats of the sub-alpine zone in South Korea. In this study, we tried to quantitatively interpret and assess the habitat characteristics by analyzing 15 landscape indices according to the differences in tree layer coverage, in the Khingan fir habitat growing naturally in the sub-alpine zone of Seoraksan National Park. It was difficult to identify the tendency of landscape ecology to increase and decrease the tree layer coverage in the study site, which was the entire Khingan fir habitat in Seoraksan National Park. However, the Khingan fir habitat was found to be generally low in coverage, and population density as the tree layer coverage of less than 50 percent accounts for 85 percent of the total habitat. Moreover, the Khingan fir habitat in the 10 to 50 percent range was fragmented into a total of 286 patches, making it relatively less connected to the habitat. The total edge length and edge density, which could determine the edge effect of the main part according to the physical form, were the highest in the habitat of 26 to 50 percent coverage, indicating a relatively high impact from outside than habitats of other coverages. The shape with the tree layer coverage of between 10 and 50 percent was more complex even with patches of the same size, and it is believed that these characteristics make it more susceptible to habitat fragmentation and external confounding. We expect that the results of this study can be useful for time series analysis of spatial expansion or reduction of the Khingan fir habitat in Seoraksan National Park and provide the reference data for the morphological change and movement of patches and the connectivity and break-off between forests.