• Korean Journal of Environmental Biology
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• v.42 no.2
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• pp.207-218
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• 2024

Food webs have received global attention as next-generation biomonitoring tools; however, it remains challenging because revealing trophic links between species is costly and laborious. Although a link-extrapolation method utilizing published trophic link data can address this difficulty, it has limitations when applied to construct food webs in domestic streams due to the lack of information on endemic species in global literature. Therefore, this study aimed to develop a link extrapolation-based food web model adapted to Korean stream ecosystems. We considered taxonomic similarity of predation and dominance of generalists in aquatic ecosystems, designing taxonomically higher-level matching methods: family matching for all fish (Family), endemic fish (Family-E), endemic fish playing the role of consumers (Family-EC), and resources (Family-ER). By adding the commonly used genus matching method (Genus) to these four matching methods, a total of five matching methods were used to construct 103 domestic food webs. Predictive power of both individual links and food web indices were evaluated by comparing constructed food webs with corresponding empirical food webs. Results showed that, in both evaluations, proposed methods tended to perform better than Genus in a data-poor environment. In particular, Family-E and Family-EC were the most effective matching methods. Our model addressed domestic data scarcity problems when using a link-extrapolation method. It offers opportunities to understand stream ecosystem food webs and may provide novel insights into biomonitoring.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Landscape Architecture
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• v.48 no.1
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• pp.25-34
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• 2020

Land use in watersheds has been shown to be a major driving factor in determining the status of the water quality of streams. In this light, scientists have been investigating the roles of riparian vegetation on the relationships between land use in watersheds and the associated stream water quality. Numerous studies reported that riparian vegetation could alleviate the adverse effects caused by land use in watersheds and on stream water quality through various hydrological, biochemical and ecological mechanisms. However, this concept has been criticized as the true effects of riparian vegetation must be assessed by comprehensive models that mimic real environmental settings. This study aimed to estimate a comprehensive structural equation model integrating topography, land use, and characteristics of riparian vegetation. We used water quality data from the Nakdong River system monitored under the National Aquatic Ecosystem Monitoring Program (NAEMP) of the Korean Ministry of Environment (MOE). Also, riparian vegetation data and land use data were extracted from the Land Use/Land Cover map (LULC) produced by the MOE. The number of structural equation models (SEMs) were estimated in Amos of IBM SPSS. Study results revealed that land use was determined by elevation, and developed areas within a watershed significantly increased the concentration of Total Nitrogen (TN) in streams and LDI in riparian vegetation. On the contrary, developed areas significantly reduced LPI and PLAND. At the same time, PLAND and LDI significantly reduced the concentration of TN in streams. Thus, it was clear that developed areas in watersheds had both a direct and an indirect impact on the concentration of TN in streams, and spatial pattern and the amount of vegetation of riparian vegetation could significantly alleviate the negative impacts of developed areas on TN concentration in streams. To enhance stream water quality, reducing developed areas in a watershed is critical for long-term watershed management plans, restoration patterns for riparian vegetation could be immediately implemented since riparian areas were less developed than most other watersheds.