• Journal of the Korean Institute of Landscape Architecture
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.288-296
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• 1998

Natural or human disturbances cause landscape changes, which may be measured by the degree of heterogeneity. In a 16km$\times$19km area, divided into 100m$\times$100m cells, of Seoul city and its suburb, land covers are classified into 6 groups in aerial photos and land use maps. The degree of heterogeneity is defined as the number of cells that surround a central cell but have different land cover from the central cell divided by 8. The value of the degree of heterogeneity is between 0 and 1. Major findings are 1) Both urban and natural areas have low degree of heterogeneity, about 0.15~0.17. 2) Suburban area under heavy pressure of development and urbanization has highest degree of heterogeneity, about 0.25. 3) The peak of the degree of heterogeneity moved about 4.5km outward in 22 years. 4) Outer suburban area has lower degree of heterogeneity as the area is a greenbelt or forest. 5) The results show the areas with higher degree of heterogeneity which may need landscape management plans, and natural areas with lower degree of heterogeneity which may need landscape conservation plans. A landscape change model may be built for a specific city when this technique is applied to multiple sectors of the city, and the model may predict future landscape changes of the city.

• Journal of Ecology and Environment
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• v.45 no.4
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• pp.190-202
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• 2021

Background: Landscape metrics have been widely applied to quantifying the relationship between land surface temperature and urban spatial patterns and have received acceptable verification from landscape ecologists but some studies have shown their inaccurate results. The objective of the study is to compare landscape metrics and texture-based measures as alternative indices in measuring urban heterogeneity effects on LST at multiple scales. Results: The statistical results showed that the correlation between urban landscape heterogeneity and LST increased as the spatial extent (scale) of under-study landscapes increased. Overall, landscape metrics showed that the less fragmented, the more complex, larger, and the higher number of patches, the lower LST. The most significant relationship was seen between edge density (ED) and LST (r = - 0.47) at the sub-region scale. Texture measures showed a stronger relationship (R² = 34.84% on average) with LST than landscape metrics (R² = 15.33% on average) at all spatial scales, meaning that these measures had a greater ability to describe landscape heterogeneity than the landscape metrics. Conclusion: This study suggests alternative measures for overcoming landscape metrics shortcomings in estimating the effects of landscape heterogeneity on LST variations and gives land managers and urban planners new insights into urban design.

• The Korean Journal of Ecology
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• v.23 no.5
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• pp.359-368
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• 2000

Landscape change is the modification and replacement of landscape elements in accordance with human management and natural disturbance on land mosaics. During landscape change, changes in patterns such as heterogeneity, diversity and shape, and juxtaposition of spatial elements are also accompanied. For the sustainable landscape system, therefore, spatial characteristics of the landscape should be considered in implementation of landscape conservation and restoration planning. Short-term changes of land-use and landscape pattern during the 10 years of 1980s and 1990s were investigated in the agriculture-forestry dominated landscape system through the statistics and the analysis of landscape-vegetation map. Study area is Yangdong-myon, Yangpyung-gun (37°27′30"N, 127°46′50"E), Kyonggi-do, in central Korea. Landscape change of this region was significantly related to the recent industrialization according to socio-economic development. Analyses of landscape pattern show that the area of secondary forest sustained by human activity decreased and it was replaced with large exotic plantations during this period. Area of paddy field was also extended. Fractal dimension of the total landscape increased, but that of paddy field area decreased due to rearrangement for mechanized farming. Moreover, the area of landscape management regimes such as plantation and cultivation increased in land mosaics during this period.

• Journal of Ecology and Environment
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• v.34 no.2
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• pp.237-249
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• 2011

Land-use changes due to the socio-economic environment influence landscape patterns and processes, which affect habitats and biodiversity. This study considers the effects of such land-use changes, particularly on the traditional rural "Maeul" forested landscape, by analyzing landscape structure and vegetation changes. Three study areas were examined that have seen their populations decrease and age over the last few decades. Five types of plant life-forms (Raunkier life-forms) were distinguished to investigate ecosystem function. Principle component analysis was used to understand vegetation dynamics and community characteristics based on a vegetation similarity index. Ordination analysis transformed species-coverage data was introduced to clarify vegetation dynamics. Landscape indices, such as area metrics, edge metrics, and shape metrics, showed that spatial heterogeneity has increased over time in all areas. Pinus densiflora was the main land-use plant type in all study areas but decreased over time, whereas Quercus spp. increased. Over a decade, P. densiflora communities shifted to deciduous oak and plantation. These findings indicate that the impact of human activities on the Maeul landscape is twofold. While forestry activities caused heavy disturbances, the abandonment of traditional human activities has led to natural succession. Furthermore, it can be concluded that the type and intensity of these human impacts on landscape heterogeneity relate differently to vegetation succession. This reflects the cause and consequence of patch dynamics. We discuss an approach for sustainable landscape planning and management of the Maeul landscape based on traditional management.

• Journal of Korean Society of Rural Planning
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.23-32
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• 2008

Landscape structure is important to understand a complex patterns and interaction with adjacent habitat in rural area. The aim of this study is to analyze relationship between landscape structure and insect spatial distribution in rural area to suggest applicable possibility of landscape structure as biological indicator. For this purpose, first, four landscape structure criteria such as distance from the forest; density of farmland-forest ecotone; landscape continuity; and field size are selected. Secondly, these criteria are applied to Gangsang-myeon, Yangpyeong-gun where mosaic feature are conserved at various spatial scale. Thirdly, application of landscape structure criteria is verified using correlation with species number, species diversity, and species richness of insect. As a result, it could be suggested that the landscape structure criteria are useful for explaining insect spatial distribution.

• 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 the Korean Society of Environmental Restoration Technology
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• v.10 no.6
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• pp.120-129
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• 2007

Rapid urbanization has transformed the spatial pattern of urban land use or cover. This paper concentrates that changed characteristics of landscape structure in the Tancheon Watershed, from 1995 to 2003 were investigated using land cover map. We used FRAGSTATS software to calculate landscape indices to characterize the landscape structure. We found that built up area has been increased rapidly during the study period, while cultivated area and forest area have been decreased rapidly in the same period. From 1995 to 2003, built up area was increased from 19.73% to 39.62% and cultivated area and forest area was decreased 17.60% to 5.97% and 58.31% to 49.41%. Number of patches, mean euclidean nearest-neighbor distance, contagion index, Shannon's diversity index increased considerably from 1995 to 2003, also suggesting the landscape in the study area became more fragmented and heterogeneous. but because of continuously fragmentation, landscape became homogeneity. The study demonstrates that landscape metrics can be a useful indicator in landscape monitoring and landscape assessment.

• Korean Journal of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.140-148
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• 2007

The remote sensing observations of land surface properties are inevitably influenced by the landscape heterogeneity. In this paper, we introduce a geostatistical technique to provide a quantitative interpretation of landscape heterogeneity in terms of key land surface parameters. The study areas consist of the two KoFlux sites: (1) the Gwangneung site, covered with temperate mixed forests on a complex terrain, and (2) the Haenam site with mixed croplands on a relatively flat terrain. The semivariogram and fractal analyses were performed for both sites to characterize the spatial heterogeneity of two radiation parameters, i.e., land surface temperature (LST) and albedo. These parameters are the main factors affecting the reflected longwave and shortwave radiation components from the two study sites. We derived them from the high-resolution Landsat ETM+ satellite images collected on 23 Sep. 2001 and 14 Feb. 2002. The results of our analysis show that the characteristic scales of albedo was >1 km at the Gwangneung site and approximately 0.3 km at the Haenam site. For LST, the scale of heterogeneity was also >1 km at the Gwangneung site and >0.6 to 1.0 km at the Haenam site. At both sites, there was little change in the characteristic scales of the two parameters between the two different seasons.

• 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 the Korean Society of Environmental Restoration Technology
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• v.12 no.5
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• pp.28-41
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• 2009

Because fire has significant impacts on fauna and flora in forest ecosystems, as well as socioeconomic influences to local community, it has been an important field of study for decades. One of the most common ways to reduce fire risk is to enhance fire-resilience of forest through fuel treatments including thinning and prescribed burning. Since fuel treatment can't be practiced over all forested areas, appropriate and effective strategies are needed. The present study aims to look at the relationship between spatial characteristics of forest structure measured with landscape pattern metrics and burn severity to provide guidelines for effective fuel treatments. Samchuck fire was selected for the study, and 232 grids covering the study areas were generated, and the grid size was 1km. The burn severity is measured with dNBR derived from satellite imagery, and spatial characteristics of forest structure were measured using FRAGSTATS for both landscape and class levels for each 1km grid. The results of this study strongly indicated that heterogeneity in composition and configuration of forests may significantly reduce burn severity. By enhancing heterogeneity of forests, fuel treatments for fire-resilience forest could be more effective.