• Journal of Wetlands Research
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.213-220
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• 2014

Recently, river maintenance is change due to concern for the environment increases. Thus, the river restoration and river environment is best part of river maintenance. In case of Korea, existing river is improvement straightly for flood control and transportation. When the stream channel is straightly, maintain stability is important. Thus, construction of levees along the river. The various river structures for the purpose of flood control and transportation are inhibit factors of longitudinal and lateral connectivity. Connectivity is defined as the maintenance of lateral, longitudinal, and vertical pathways for biological, hydrological, and physical processes. Long-term point of view, increased connectivity is very important for a healthy ecosystem composition. As the first step of river restoration, this study described theory and concept of river continuum and the numerical model was applied to a real topography to simulate the flow analysis with or without segregated and blocked space in the Mankyung river. The results of this study can be utilized to develop the watershed connectivity assessments methods in order to the river restoration.

• Journal of Ecology and Environment
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• v.48 no.1
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• pp.32-48
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• 2024

Background: Longitudinal connectivity in river systems strongly affects biological components related to ecosystem functioning, thereby playing an important role in shaping local biodiversity and ecosystem health. Environmental DNA (eDNA)-based metabarcoding has an advantage of enabling to sensitively diagnose the presence/absence of species, becoming an efficient/effective approach for studying the community structure of ecosystems. However, little attention has been paid to eDNA-based biomonitoring for river systems, particularly for assessing the river longitudinal connectivity. In this study, by using eDNA we analyzed and compared species diversity and composition among artificial barriers to assess the longitudinal connectivity of the fish community along down-, mid- and upstream in the Hotancheon from the Geum River basin. Moreover, we investigated temporal variation in eDNA fish community structure and species diversity according to season. Results: The results of species detected between eDNA and conventional surveys revealed higher sensitivity for eDNA and 61% of species (23/38) detected in both methods. The results showed that eDNA-based fish community structure differs from down-, mid- and upstream, and species diversity decreased from down to upstream regardless of season. We found that there was generally higher species diversity at the study sites in spring (a total number of species across the sites [n] = 29) than in autumn (n = 27). Nonmetric multidimensional scaling and heatmap analyses further suggest that there was a tendency for community clusters to form in the down-, mid- and upstream, and seasonal variation in the community structure also existed for the sites. Dominant species in the Hotancheon was Rhynchocypris oxycephalus (26.07%) regardless of season, and subdominant species was Nipponocypris koreanus (16.50%) in spring and Odontobutis platycephala (15.73%) in autumn. Artificial barriers appeared to negatively affect the connectivity of some fish species of high mobility. Conclusions: This study attempts to establish a biological monitoring system by highlighting the versatility and power of eDNA metabarcoding in monitoring native fish community and further evaluating the longitudinal connectivity of river ecosystems. The results of this study suggest that eDNA can be applied to identify fish community structure and species diversity in river systems, although some shortcomings remain still need to be resolved.

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.51 no.5
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• pp.461-470
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• 2018

Beyond river restoration focused on the inside region of main streams up to now, the river restoration including the outside region of streams has been started recently. As a part of this attempt, the restoration of abandoned rivers has been tried, but the development of a suitable model to quantitatively assess the improvement of hydraulic and ecological connectivity is not still satisfying. In this study, a grid - based hydraulic analysis model to evaluate the recovery of ecological connectivity through the restoration of abandoned rivers has been developed. In order to examine the applicability of this model, the ecohydaulic connectivity of the Cheongmi River Project area in Notap region was evaluated. This model can promptly and simply analyze the temporal and spatial distribution of the hydraulic and ecological characteristics, and it can be used as a appropriate tool to assess the hydraulic and ecological connectivity in the future.

• Journal of Korean Society for Geospatial Information Science
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.17-26
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• 2015

River corridors facilitate dispersal and movement and prevent local extinction of species. As a result of stream restoration projects, which include installation of waterfront and flood control structures, the number of animals, which rely on river corridor, is decreasing. For the study, factors affecting fish assembly were extracted by a species distribution model with the fish data collected from the Seom River in Hoengseong County and City of Wonju, Ganwon Province, Korea between March to October 2013. The riparian connectivity was assessed using species richness and rarity. According to result of the field survey, there were 38 species and 7,061 individuals for fish. The analysis suggests the following. Firstly, factors affecting fish richness in species distribution model results are shown to be velocity, riffle, riparian width, and water width. The accuracy of the model proves to be suitable with the correlation coefficient of 0.83 and MAPE of 19.2%. Secondly, the low rarity area is shown to be straight streams in Jeon river near to Hongseong County and the high rarity area to be streams with large width, existing alluvial area at channel junction between Jeon river and Seom river. Thirdly, according to connectivity results, areas where weirs are installed or riparian buffer area is removed showed low connectivity. The areas where farmland near riparian and forest areas showed high connectivity. The results of this study can be utilized to improve current facilities and enhance connectivity as a restoration guide.

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.47 no.4
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• pp.397-409
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• 2014

In this study, the assessment scheme has been developed to evaluate the ecological function of rivers which were changed by the river improvement project. The evaluating factors are composed of physical structure in river channels and ecological connectivity in river areas, and each value of the factors is quantified based on 4 and 2 variables, respectably. This scheme was applied to past (1918, before artificial river improvement) and present Mankyung River area. A GIS model was adopted for calculating, analysing, and presenting river ecological conditions using the 204 grids and 7 reaches in study area. Comparison results show that the evaluation grade was decreased in both factors after river improvement. The main causes of lower grade (from II to IV) for physical structure are the river straightening and crossing structures. The reduction (from II to III) in ecological connectivity grade effected by linear fragmentation due to roads and rails is found to be greater than areal fragmentation due to land-use. In particular, it is also found that a high degree of ecological connectivity in 1918 was distributed along the river, but that one in 2007 showed a tendency to scatter because of the construction of levee and increase of urbanized area.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.31 no.4B
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• pp.383-391
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• 2011

In this study, an evaluation method was proposed to determine the restoration section in the riverine ecobelt project. The target river for this study is the Hongcheon river in Kangwon-do. The Hongcheon river of 96 km was divided longitudinally into subsections of 2 km. The analysis through map and aerial photograph as well as field surveys were performed in 48-sub-sections. The fragmentation items were classified into connectivity and ecological functionality. The connectivity fragmentation was also divided into two items: the area discontinuity of the land use and the line discontinuity of river bank and road. Also, the ecological functional fragmentation was evaluated by using the items of river channel, river bed, vegetation, and the obstruction of river flow. These items was modified from those in the previous literature. From map analyses and field surveys, the fragmentation score was kept with each items in 48 sub-sections of Hongcheon river. The fragmentation rate was made from the total score in each section. The results showed that sections from F1 to G2 was evaluated to have high rates of all connectivity and functionality fragmentation of 1st or 2nd rate. Other sections have high connectivity fragmentation of 2nd rate, but low functional fragmentation. Thus, these sections are evaluated to be excludible in restoration site. This study seems to make a contribution to evaluate the fragmented sections for the riverine ecobelt project.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Landscape Architecture
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.34-41
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• 2003

Connectivity is a quantitative indicator of landscape structure, and connectivity of urban green areas is an indicator of ecological integrity in urban landscapes. The purposes of this study are to assess the connectivity of urban green areas in Seoul, and to develop a method of siting new green areas for better connectivity. Diverse methods for connectivity assessment and indices of connectivity are reviewed and applied to the connectivity assesment of green areas in Seoul. The indices of connectivity of green areas in Seoul turned out to be higher than expected, maybe because many of them are rather evenly distributed, serving as stepping stones, and because there are many riparian corridors, including the Han River. Analysis also shows the optimum location of new green space patches or corridors will be those spots that would link the mainland, or large green areas outside the city, and existing green areas in the city. Restoration of urban streams as ecological corridors will significantly enhance connectivity. Three different scenarios with increasing numbers of new green areas in the city were then prepared. The changes of connectivity were measured and the possible success rates of animal dispersal were simulated. The results revealed that restoration of streams will increase the connectivity and success rates of animal dispersal.

• Ecology and Resilient Infrastructure
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• v.3 no.4
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• pp.307-314
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• 2016

River restoration has recently been performed not only for the improvement of the artificial parts in the past but also for the restoration of abandoned river reaches which were blocked and isolated. For the restoration of abandoned river reaches, it is important to recover the hydraulic and ecological connectivity in the isolated space by longitudinal structures like levees. But because the assessment tools to determine whether the river restoration is performed properly are so rare at present, we aim to provide a tool for assessing ecological connectivity in a target river in this study. In the first step, one-dimensional numerical model for rainfall-runoff and channel routing was developed and then applied to the watershed of the Cheongmi Stream. In this step, a numerical model was developed to assess the restoration of connectivity. The model consists of two parts: one part is to convert the results of one-dimensional channel routing into two-dimensional spatial distribution. The other is to calculate the habitat suitability index according to time steps by using two-dimensional hydraulic features. The model was applied to a restoration area of the Cheongmi Stream. The advantage of this study is that two-dimensional hydraulic analysis can be easily obtained from one-dimensional hydraulic analysis without a complex and time-consuming two-dimensional analysis. HHS (Hydraulic Habitat Suitablility) by sections of target reaches and target species can be easily obtained using the results of this study.

• Ecology and Resilient Infrastructure
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.137-146
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• 2015

Lateral connectivity between a main channel and a former channel plays an integral role in maintaining ecological functions of stream-floodplain ecosystems. This study virtually restored the connectivity of the former channel, which is currently isolated by channelization, in the Mangyeong River, Korea. Fish habitat improvement after the connectivity restoration was evaluated using River2D, two-dimensional depth-averaged hydraulic modeling, depending on normal and flood flow conditions. Target fish species were crucian carp (Carassius auratus), which are known as lentic species, and pale chub (Zacco platypus), known as lotic species. The weighted usable area (WUA) of the two species was increased after the connectivity restoration: the two-way connection between the main and formal channels was more effective than the one-way connection. The result of the physical habitat simulation at a flood flow condition demonstrated an increased rate of the WUA than during a normal flow condition. In particular, the WUA of pale chub increased about four times on the two-way connectivity restoration. This result suggests that habitat availability of both lentic and lotic fish species will increase after a connectivity restoration, and a two-way connectivity restoration may be more effective. In addition, the restored formal channel would function as a shelter for fish during the flood season.

• Ecology and Resilient Infrastructure
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.93-99
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• 2022

It was confirmed that the fish diversity decreased with increasing index of weir's density (IWD) in the four river systems. The IWD showed difference with watershed, it was high in the Nakdong River (NDR). Both two river systems of Gum River (GUR) and Yeongsan River (YSR) were similar, whereas relatively lower density observed in the Han River (HNR) system. A result of 2-Dimensional Kolmogorov-Smirnov (2-DKS) as a nonparametic test showed different threshold values affecting fish diversity with the river systems. The p-values based on D_max, were significantly different at 0.05 level (except for YSR). The threshold values affecting fish diversity were also different with watershed. The values were 1.6/km of the HNR, 1.3/km of the NDR, and 2.3/km of the GUR, respectively. The fish diversity was decreased when IWD is over threshold values. The IWD of total 404 rivers (about 33%) among 1,217 surveyed in this study showed above threshold value. These rivers should be considered first for evaluating river continuity. The IWD and threshold value suggested in this study would be useful for selecting a stream priority for river connectivity study.