• Korean Journal of Environment and Ecology
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.215-234
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• 2014

The purpose of this study is to identify the type and characteristics of the domestic natural streams in order to establish a basis for stream restoration and evaluation. To this end, 95 domestic natural stream areas, which have various natural environments, were selected except for the province of island and then the characteristics of natural environment, hydromorpholoy, plant and vegetation were investigated and analyzed in each stream area. As a result, 95 stream areas were classified into total 24 types according to 3 criteria such as stream size (4 types), altitude (3 types), bed material (5 types). Depending on altitude class that is the environmental factor showing the highest correlation with each stream types, the emergence of vegetation and plant, 24 stream types were reclassified into 3 types such as lowland (altitude less than 200m), mountain (altitude from 200m to 500m), highland (altitude more than 500m), and hydromorpholoy, plant and vegetation characteristics of each stream type were compared. First, when compared to the mountain and highland streams, the typical features of lowland streams were as follows: Stream size was large but bed material size was small and there were many valley forms where flood plane were developed well. In addition, the more large stream size was, the more cross-section width variability, bars and sinuosity were in good conditions. In lowland stream, representative vegetation community was Salix koreensis community. On the other hand, when compared to the lowland streams, the typical features of mountain and highland streams were as follows: Stream size was small but bed material was coarse-grained and its size was large. Mountain and highland streams valley form where flood plane was not developed well was narrow, and sinuosity and bars development were weak. Representative vegetation communities of mountain streams were Quercus serrata -, Quercus variabilis -, Styrax japonica community and representative vegetation communities of highland streams were Pinus densiflora -, Quercus mongolica -, Fraxinus rhynchophylla community.