• 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 the Korean Association of Geographic Information Studies
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.95-104
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• 2006

The DMZ is a 248km long thin green line which has various landscapes of fields, hills and mountains. This study focused on western part of DMZ and vicinity which consist of abandoned rice paddy, wetlands and fields. The main purpose of this study is to detect the vegetation vitality from the western part of MDL to DMZ vicinity and identify and quantify ecological buffer(ecotone) width adopting logistic function derived from 'Vegetation Index-distance curve' using an Landsat ETM+ image acquired on June of 2002. Green leaf vegetation was quantified to identify the ecotone buffer in western DMZ and vicinity(civilian control area: CCA) using Transformed Vegetation Index(TVI) which is one of common measurement among various indices. Vegetation measurement from Military Demarcation Line(MDL) to vicinity area was investigated at 500m intervals to 10kms of southern and northern part of western DMZ and vicinity. The Logistic function models the sigmoid curve of growth with three stages of growth of initial competition and maturity. In the TVI-distance logistic curve, the maturity is high vegetation vitality, the competition is vitality changing, and the initial is low vitality. In the TVI-distance curve, maturity area of high TVI value is core area for ecological conservation, and the competition area between inflection points can be an ecotone(ecological buffer). In case of southern part, maximum TVI value is 221.92 and minimum is 207.16, and maximum TVI of northen part is 215.32 and minimum is 188.35. That means forest devastation of north Korean part of DMZ and vicinity is severer than that of south Korea. The width of core area for ecological conservation is 2,311m, and ecotone in the southern part is 5,339m, so minimum width from MDL for ecological conservation can be computed as 7,651m. In case of Northern part, the width of core area is 1,841m, and ecotone buffer is 5,014m, so ecological conservation width can be estimated as 6,855m. In case of northen part, width of estimated core area is less than that of DMZ width, which means ecological disturbance is very severe in northern part of western DMZ.

• Journal of Korean Society of Forest Science
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• v.83 no.4
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• pp.460-472
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• 1994

This study has been conducted to give some ideas for reasonable ecological management of Taejon city and its adjacent forest ecosystem against the effect of acid rain. Rain monitoring points to analyse its components represented 1 point in industrial area, 4 points in commercial area, 4 points in residential area, and 5 points in suburban area and forest survey was done in 7 forest sites adjacent to rain monitoring points. Transformed vegetation index(TVI) based on Landsat TM data was analysed for forest area. Taejon area was seriously contaminated by air pollutants and average concentration of anions in precipitation were 20.16mg/l for $SO_4{^{2-}}$, 3.65mg/l for $NO_3{^-}$, and 3.09mg/l for $Cl^-$. Anion in precipitation were $1.09mg/m^2/month$ for $SO_4{^{2-}}$, $0.23mg/m^2/month$ for $NO_3{^-}$, and $0.20mg/m^2/month$ for $Cl^-$. Cation in precipitation were $0.14mg/m^2/month$ for $Ca^{2+}$, $0.10mg/m^2/month$ for $NH_4{^+}$, $0.08mg/m^2/month$ for $Na^+$, $0.07mg/m^2/month$ for $K^+$, and $0.08mg/m^2/month$ for $Mg^{2+}$. The region with the highest concentration of $SO_4{^{2-}}$, $NO_3{^-}$, and $Cl^-$ in rain was industrial area. $SO_4{^{2-}}$, $NO_3{^-}$, and $Cl^-$ concentrations in industrial area were 43.08, 3.88, and 3.64ppm, respectively. Forest soil showed strongly acidic ranging pH4.16-4.94. Transformed vegetation index(TVI) were 3.11 in Dangsan, 4.00 in Kyechoksan, 4.13 in Bomunsan, 4.18 in Kabhasan, 3.34 in Bongsan, 4.13 in Sikchangsan, and 4.20 in Seongchisan. Dangsan forest located near in industrial area showed the lowest TVI.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Environmental Restoration Technology
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.36-44
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• 2001

The main purpose of this study was to classify forest vegetation effectively using Landsat Thematic Mapper data(June, 1994) in mountainous region. The research area was the Mt. Wolak Experimental Forest of Chungbuk National University, near Chungju and Jecheon city, Chungcheongbuk-do. To classify forest vegetation effectively, Normalized Difference Vegetation Index(NDVI) was used to reduce topographic effects. This NDVI was modified and transformed to the value of 0 to 255, and then the modified values were combined with other Landsat Thematic Mapper bands. To classify forest and land cover types, unsupervised classification method was used. The results of this study are summarized as follows. 1. Combinations of band "3, 5, NDVI" in Landsat Thematic Mapper data showed a good separation with high accuracy. The expected classification accuracy was 95.1% in Landsat Thematic Mapper data. 2. The Land Cover types were classified into six groups : coniferous forest, deciduous forest, mixed forest, paddy and grass, non-forest, and other undetectable areas. As these classified results were compared with the reconnaissance survey and aerial black and white infrared photographs, the overall classification accuracy was 76.5% in Landsat Thematic Mapper data. 3. The portion of non-forest in Mt. Wolak area was 1.9%. The percentages of coniferous, deciduous and mixed forests were 30.9%, 35.7% and 26.4%, respectively. 4. As these classified results were compared with other reference data, the percentages of coniferous, deciduous and mixed forests increased, but the portion of non-forest was exceedingly diminished. These differences are thought to be from the different research method and the different season of received Landsat Thematic Mapper data.

• Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
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• v.17 no.6
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• pp.357-366
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• 2008

It is certain that urbanization has transformed the ecological consequences severely, but urban ecosystem is not fully understood yet. Urban growth is not like a static form and it spreads spatially and temporally. Therefore in studying urban ecosystem, it is important to relate the spatial pattern of urbanization to ecological processes. Using gradient analysis, we attempted to quantify the urbanization's spatial impacts in Daejeon-city and Cheonan-city, Chungcheong-province, Korea. Because of Multifunctional Administrative City Planning (MACP), a lot of development projects are planned in Chungcheong-province, Korea. It's important to study about original cities' patterns and impacts. These results can be adopted to future city planning. So several measures such as fragmentation, vegetation index, surface temperature, population density, and income rate were computed along a 75km long and 3km wide transect. The results showed that Daejeon-city has a wider urban center, lower vegetation indexes, and higher surface temperature than Cheonan-city. Therefore in the perspective of urban environments and sustainable urbanism, it seems that Cheonan-city is better than Daejeon-city. The changes along the transect have important ecological implications, and quantifying the urbanization gradient is an important step in understanding urban ecology.

• Proceedings of the KSRS Conference
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• 2005.10a
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• pp.441-444
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• 2005

The goal of this study is to investigate the relationship between microphytobenthic biomass and normalized vegetation index obtained from Landsat TM images. Monitoring a seasonal change of microphytobenthic biomass in the sand bar is specifically focused. Since the study area, Hampyeong Bay, was difficult to approach, we failed to obtain ground truths simultaneously on satellite image acquisition. Instead, chlorophyll-a concentration in surface top layer was measured on different dates for microphytobenthic biomass. Although data were acquired on different dates, a correlation between the field and satellite images was calculated for investigating general trends of seasonal change. NDVI and tasseled cap transformed images were also used to review the variation of microphytobenthic biomass by using Landsat TM and ETM+ images. Atmosphere effects were corrected by applying COST model. Seaweeds were also flouring in the same season of microphytobentic blooming. Songseok-ri area was minimally affected by seaweeds from February to May, and selected as a test site. NDVI value was classified into high-, moderate-, and low-grade. It was well developed over fme-grained sediments and rapidly reduced from May to November over sand bar. In this bay, correlation between grain size and microphytobenthic biomass was clearly seen. From the classified NDVI and tasseled cap transformed data, we finally constructed spatial distribution and seasonal variation maps of microphytobenthic biomass.

• Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.177-188
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• 2008

Attempts to develope designation criteria for ecological protected areas were made for rational and scientific designation and management of 'ecosystem and landscape conservation areas', 'wetland protection areas', 'special islands protection areas', and 'wildlife protected areas' which have been designated and managed by the Ministry of Environment. Through analysis of the requisites and criteria of IUCN, UNESCO, Natura 2000, the Ramsar convention, the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, and Germany as well as various academic researches, evaluation items of the protected areas were classified into naturalness, biodiversity, ecosystem, and scientific values. These classification titles are reflection of Korean laws concerning the 4 protected areas described above. Of these items 'naturalness' is composed of 3 factors of wilderness, geomorphology and landscape, and vegetation. 'Biodiversity' is composed of the 5 factors of species diversity, endangered species, rare species, indigenous biological resources, and habitat of wetland wild animals. 'Ecosystem' is composed of 5 factors of typicalness, diversity, rarity, restoration ability, and degree of interference. All factors are scored using a 3 point scale of high, middle, or low and are then transformed into the numerical index for designating and zoning purposes. Conclusively, it is expected that the developed methodology will be highly applicable with field verifications.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.315-328
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• 2011

Landsat data incorporated with additional bands-normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and band ratios were used to assess the extent and rate of deforestation in the Gunung Mutis Nature Reserve (GMNR), a mountainous tropical forest in Eastern of Indonesia. Hybrid classification was chosen as the classification approach. In this approach, the unsupervised classification-iterative self-organizing data analysis (ISODATA) was used to create signature files and training data set. A statistical separability measurement-transformed divergence (TD) was used to identify the combination of bands that showed the highest distinction between the land cover classes in training data set. Supervised classification-maximum likelihood classification (MLC) was performed using selected bands and the training data set. Post-classification smoothing and accuracy assessment were applied to classified image. Post-classification comparison was used to assess the extent of deforestation, of which the rate of deforestation was calculated by the formula suggested by Food Agriculture Organization (FAO). The results of two periods of deforestation assessment showed that the extent of deforestation during 1989-1999 was 720.72 ha, 0.80% of annual rate of deforestation, and its extent of deforestation during 1999-2009 was 1,059.12 ha, 1.31% of annual rate of deforestation. Such results are important for the GMNR authority to establish strategies, plans and actions for combating deforestation.