• Journal of The Korean Society of Agricultural Engineers
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• v.49 no.6
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• pp.65-76
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• 2007

Studies in landscape ecology have emphasized on the relationship between landscape patterns and shapes. A variety of landscape metrics has been developed so far to quantify landscape structures. Therefore, their developments and widespread applications become possible with the advent of spatial information systems including geographic information systems(GIS) and remote sensing. This study is to grasp the change of land use and landscape ecology indices, and to analyze the change of landscape structure in a part of Gyeonggi-do during 15 years from 1985 to 2000. Green-area distribution maps and agricultural-area distribution maps for the analysis were reconstructed from land cover maps constructed by WAMIS(Water Management Information System). And then, 4 landscape ecology indices(TA, LPI, SHAPE_AM, CAI_MN) for the green-area and 5 landscape ecology indices(TA, PD, LPI, LSI, CAI_MN) for the agricultural-area were selected by using pearson correlation analysis. According to the spatio-temporal change analysis using landscape ecology indices, the green-area fragmentation of Yongin was the most severe of the study area and the agricultural-area fragmentation of Gwangju and Namyangju was more severe than any other regions.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Landscape Architecture
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• v.36 no.2
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• pp.69-79
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• 2008

Landscape indices are effective tools to explain the spatial structure and patterns of ecological landscape including area/density, shape, core area, isolation/proximity, contagion/interspersion, and connectivity. More than 100 indices have been developed and an increasing amount of research explains changes in urban spaces using the indices. However, landscape indices have a high level of sensitivity to the scale of analysis - grain size and extent. If the scale sensitivity of indices is not considered, the research may produce inaccurate results. This study examines the scale sensitivity of landscape indices to find relatively stable indices in the complex geographical features of Korea. The scale sensitivity was analyzed using 20 categories of grain size and 41 categories of extent change. Landsat TM and ETM+ images of five years - 1985, 1991, 1996, 2000 and 2003 - were used, and 54 class level indices mounted on the FRAGSTATS program were examined. The results are as follows: First, according to the analysis of the scale sensitivity, 19 out of 54 class level indices were found to be stable to scale change. Second, the scale sensitivity was closely related to the green area ratio, and the typical threshold of change was $40{\sim}50%$. Third, among the 16 indices which were frequently used in the research in Korea, only 6 indices were relatively stable to the scale change. These results can be an effective basis for the selection of indices in the landscape ecology research in Korea.

• Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.117-127
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• 2002

This study tested the usefulness of landscape indices for quantifying forest fragmentation due to linear development projects. Research was carried out in the middle-upper Nakdong River watershed, which has been affected by the expressway building, or national road-widening. Landscape indices were calculated from the forest cover maps before and after road-building using FRAGSTATS 3.1. We could successfully demonstrate the forest fragmentation based on landscape indices; (1) patch size decreased, and edge density and patch density increased (2) roads simplified patch shapes, especially in the larger patches, (3) patch core area size decreased, and core area density increased, (4) the distance increased between the focal patch and each of the other patches within the search radius (=1km) as a result of roads. We suggest several important needs for future researches, including continued investigation of scaling issues, development of indices that measure specific components of spatial pattern, and study of the relationships between forest fragmentation and ecological processes.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Landscape Architecture
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.105-112
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• 1999

Landcover change is an important factor that changes structure and function of regional ecosystem. As the rise of concern on environment quality, many studies are trying to quantify and evaluate the landsacpe in recent days. In this study, using landscape indices with RS(Remote Sensing) and GIS(Geographic Information System) technology, spatio-temporal variations of areas and distribution of forest patches were examined in the Chonan from 1985 to 1996. Fragstats 2.0 was employed to analyze and compute 31 landscape indices from 52 landcover maps. A result of this study showed that area of forest and paddy decreased as a result of urban sprawl. Especially from 1993 to 1996, the change of land use progressed rapidly because of merging a city and a country in Chonan. The size of patch in forest had been smaller and irregular form, heterogeneity of size of forest patches within sub-basin increased, and variety of patch types around forest patches increased from 1985 to 1996.

• Journal of Ecology and Environment
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• v.33 no.2
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• pp.105-114
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• 2010

The principal objective of this study was to characterize the relationships between geographical conditions (e.g., island area, distance to mainland) and landscape structures of uninhabited islands, and to evaluate the effects of islands and their landscape structures on species richness. One hundred randomly selected islands and 5,000 m buffered areas derived from the boundaries of each island were used to summarize the number of observed bird species, and landscape pattern indices, particularly patch density, edge density, shape index, and mean nearest neighboring distance. Spatial arrangements of individual patch type at the class level, which are markedly affected by the distance from an island to the mainland, have a superior ability to explain the variances in species richness, as compared to the geographical conditions and landscape pattern indices at the landscape level. The results demonstrate that the patch type landscape structure is the primary factor affecting species richness, as well as the distance to the mainland. In particular, landscape pattern indices of cropland/pasture and woody cover are statistically significant in terms of explaining species richness, which suggests that food resources and appropriate conditions in landscape structures of habitat types are assumed as important elements in attracting bird species. This study also proposes the importance of evaluation on the landscape structure of each island, in order to designate protected areas and to establish a management plan for species conservation in uninhabited islands.

• Journal of Korean Society of Rural Planning
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• v.11 no.4 s.29
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• pp.47-57
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• 2005

The goal of this research is to evaluate landscape-ecological characteristics of watersheds in the Nakdong River Basin by using Geogaphic Information System (GIS) and landscape indices for integation of spatio-temporal informations and multivariate statistical techniques for quantitative analysis of forest landscape. Fragmentation index and change matrix techniques using factor analysis and grid overlay method were used to efficiently analyze and manage huge amount of information for ecological-environmental assessment (land-cover and forest landscape patterns). According to the results based on the pattern analysis of land-cover changes using the change detection matrix between 1980s and 1990s, addition on 750km$^2$ became urbanized areas. The altered 442.04km$^2$ was agricultural areas which is relatively easy for shifting of land-use, and 205.1km$^2$ of forests became urbanized areas, and average elevation and slope of the whole altered areas were 75m and 4$^{\circ}$. On the other hand, 120km$^2$ of urban areas were changed into other areas (i.e., agricultural areas and green space), and fortunately, certain amount of naturalness had been recovered. But still those agricultural areas and fallow areas, which were previously urban areas, had high potential of re-development for urbanization due to their local conditions. According to the structural analysis of forest landscape using the landscape indices, the forest fragmentation of watersheds along the main stream of the Nakdong River was more severe than my other watersheds. Furthermore, the Nakdong-sangju and Nakdong-miryang watersheds had unstable forest structures as well as least amount of forest quantity. Thus, these areas need significant amount of forest through a new forest management policy considering local environmental conditions.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Environmental Restoration Technology
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.21-32
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• 2009

Coastal sand dune area is the important ecosystem as an ecotone which located between coastal area and terrestrial area. Moreover, it is very complicate landscape that have geomorphological interaction between erosion and accumulation of sand. Therefore, it is necessary to understand the sand dune ecosystem in view point of landscape scale including background landscape affecting origin of sand dune. Landscape ecological approach in the complicate ecosystem already started in developed countries, and it is applied to land management and biodiversity conservation strategies even in national scale. In this paper, landscape ecological analysis using landscape pattern analysis was carried out on 7 study areas (Yellow Sea : Hakampo and Doksan, South Sea : Namyeol and Balpo, East Sea : Hosan, Hupo and Goraebul) in Korean coastal sand dune ecosystem. Landscape elements were composed by 9 elements in these study areas. Major background landscape elements was the forest land and agricultural field. Namyeol (S06) has larger patch landscape compare to other areas. In patch shape indices, Hupo (E10) shows more complicate patch shapes. The high landscape heterogeneity showed in the Doksan sand dune area and that of Hosan. It shows that these areas were composed by various patch types. However, using landscape indices have to use very carefully because several variables have influence to the result such as scale and spatial pattern of study areas. Although landscape analysis through landscape indices shows sometimes difficult to explain the ecosystem, landscape scale approach on ecosystem assessment still useful to interpret in ecological process in large range of habitat.

• Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.349-362
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• 2000

In the study, the feasibility of landscape ecological measures as indices system for interpretation and evaluation of regional ecosystem was investigated through the application to Yongin City. Each patch metrics well showed the class structure and supplemented the class metrics, and class metrics also showed well the landscape structure and supplemented the landscape metrics. And the change analysis through subtraction of two set of landscape ecological measurement in two point of time showed the dynamic trends very well. One of the dynamic trends in Yongin City was the rapid fragmentation. While there was no landcover data on Yongin City, using Landsat data and remote sensing techniques were proved to be efficient and effective to produce the digital landcover data.

• Journal of the Korean Association of Geographic Information Studies
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.78-84
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• 2003

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the ecosystem soundness in landscape scale using landscape indices, and to extract regional information that can be used for sustainable landuse planning. About BongWha-gun, the landcover classification using Landsat TM images and patch analysis ware carried out, and some landscape indices were calculated using geographic information system(GIS) and patch analyst program. As the results of this study, Seokpo, Jaesan and Sochun got higher scores in landscape indices related to the ecosystem soundness. But, Bonghwa-eup got lowest scores in the 10 regions. When compared with normalized difference vegetation index(NDVI), this result showed consistency to some degree. Although, there needs more supplementary studies, it is anticipated that landscape scale ecosystem evaluation using landscape indices can gives us some informations related to sustainable landuse planning.

• Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.391-407
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• 2012

The loss of connectivity and fragmentation of forest landscapes are seriously hindering dispersal of many forest-dwelling species, which may be critical for their viability and conservation by decreasing habitat area and increasing distance among habitats. For understanding their environmental impacts, numerous spatial models exist to measure landscape connectivity. However, general relationships between functional connectivity and landscape structure are lacking, there is a need to develop landscape metrics that more accurately measure landscape connectivity in whole landscape and individual patches. We reviewed functional and structural definition of landscape connectivity, explained their mathematical connotations, and applied representative 13 indices in 3 districts of Seoul having fragmented forest patches with tits, the threshold distance was applied 500m by considering the dispersal of tits. Results of correlation and principal component analysis showed that connectivity indices could be divided by measurement methods whether they contain the area attribute with distance or not. Betweenness centrality(BC), a representative index measuring distance and distribution among patches, appreciated highly stepping stone forest patches, and difference of probability of connectivity(dPC), an index measuring including area information, estimated integrated connectivity of patches. Therefore, for evaluating landscape connectivity, it is need to consider not only general information of a region and species' characteristics but also various measuring methods of landscape connectivity.