• Korean Journal of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.117-128
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• 2023

Tree dieback in Geumgang pine forest has occurred in Uljin and Bonghwa since the 2010s. In order to identify status of tree dieback and prevent further damages, a monitoring project for tree dieback in Geumgang pine forest had been launched by Southern regional office of forest service in 2020. This study was conducted to understand the characteristics of tree dieback occurrence and assess the high risk areas using the occurrence data in the project. Pine tree dieback occurred frequently in areas with mountain ridges in high elevation, dry south-facing slopes, mature stands, and high temperature rise in winter. Furthermore, the result of risk assessment showed that 6.2 percent(5,294ha) of Geumgang pine forest(85,000 ha) in total study area are at high risk of tree dieback. As the pine trees in the high risk area are prone to experience the dieback due to temperature and drought-related extreme weather events, regular forest management activities are needed to reduce the drought stress of pine trees. Forest health management for the pine forest with high protection priority can be also useful strategy to counter the risk of decline. This results can be used as the basic information for the adaptive forest management to climate change.

• Korean Journal of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.10-18
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• 2017

Korean Red Pine (Pinus densiflora) has been protected and used as the most ecologically and socio-culturally important tree species in Korea. However, as dieback of Korean red pines has occurred in the protected area of the forest genetic resources. The aims of this study is to identify causes for dieback of pine tree by investigating topographical characteristics of pine tree dieback and its correlation to meteorological factors. We extracted the dead trees from the time series aerial images and analyzed geomorphological characteristics of dead tree concentration area. As a result, 1,956 dead pine trees were extracted in the study region of 2,600 ha. Dieback of pine trees was found mostly in the areas with high altitude, high solar radiation, low topographic wetness index, south and south-west slopes, ridgelines, and high wind exposure compared to other living pine forest area. These areas are classified as high temperature and high drought stress regions due to micro-climatic characteristics affected by topographic factors. As high temperature and drought stress are generally increasing with climate change, we can evaluated that a risk of pine tree dieback is also increasing. Based on these geomorphological characteristics, we developed a pine tree dieback risk map using Maximum Entropy Model (MaxEnt), and it can be useful for establishing Korean red pine protection and management strategies.

• Research in Plant Disease
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.198-201
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• 2016

Recently, severe dieback of apple tree has occurred in the apple orchards of Chungbuk province. Dieback rate and its casual agents have been investigated on the Chungbuk province apple orchards in 2013-2015. Out of 29,265 apple trees in the 27 orchards throughout Chungbuk province, 4,000 apple trees (13.7%) showed dieback symptoms. The causes of dieback were Phytophthora rot (50.4%), violet root rot by Helicobasidium sp. (27.1%), rodents (10%), white root rot by Rosellinia sp. (6.3%), and freezing injury (6.3%). Compared to previous reports published in 1995 and 2006, Phytophthora rot was the most dominant disease, which is thought to be due to high temperature during growing season and the increase of lowland cultivation. Results of this study will be useful to establish of the management strategy of apple tree dieback that has been increased recently.

• Research in Plant Disease
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.88-94
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• 2020

Recently, the severe dieback of apple trees resulting from soil-borne diseases has occurred in South Korea. The casual agents of dieback were surveyed on 74 apple orchards that had been damaged nationwide in 2016-2019. The number of apple orchards affected alone by Phytophthora rot, violet root rot, and white root rot was 31, 34, and 3, respectively. Also, the total number of mixed infection orchards was 6. Out of 9,112 apple trees affected by dieback, the trees damaged by Phytophthora rot, violet root rot, and white root rot were 3,332, 3,831, and 44, respectively. Moreover, the total number of mixed infection apple trees was 1,905. The provinces mainly affected were Gyeongnam, Gyeongbuk, Chungbuk, and Jeonbuk. The survey on these infected apple orchards will be available to form management strategy for the dieback that had been increased by soil-borne fungal pathogens.

• Journal of Korean Society of Forest Science
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• v.109 no.3
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• pp.259-270
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• 2020

Extreme weather events, such as heat and drought, have occurred frequently over the past two decades. This has led to continuous reports of cases of forest damage due to physiological stress, not pest damage. In 2014, pine trees were collectively damaged in the forest genetic resources reserve of Sogwang-ri, Uljin, South Korea. An investigation was launched to determine the causes of the dieback, so that a forest management plan could be prepared to deal with the current dieback, and to prevent future damage. This study aimedto 1) understand the topographic and structural characteristics of the area which experienced pine tree dieback, 2) identify the main causes of the dieback, and 3) predict future risk areas through the use of machine-learning techniques. A model for identifying risk areas was developed using 14 explanatory variables, including location, elevation, slope, and age class. When three machine-learning techniques-Decision Tree, Random Forest (RF), and Support Vector Machine (SVM) were applied to the model, RF and SVM showed higher predictability scores, with accuracies over 93%. Our analysis of the variable set showed that the topographical areas most vulnerable to pine dieback were those with high altitudes, high daily solar radiation, and limited water availability. We also found that, when it came to forest stand characteristics, pine trees with high vertical stand densities (5-15 m high) and higher age classes experienced a higher risk of dieback. The RF and SVM models predicted that 9.5% or 115 ha of the Geumgang Pine Forest are at high risk for pine dieback. Our study suggests the need for further investigation into the vulnerable areas of the Geumgang Pine Forest, and also for climate change adaptive forest management steps to protect those areas which remain undamaged.

• Journal of Forest and Environmental Science
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• v.38 no.2
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• pp.137-139
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• 2022

In 2021, severely infected trees showing distinct symptoms including branch dieback, necrotic lesions on branches, cankers on the shoots, and dark brown discoloration on the stem on Hovenia dulcis were found in the provincial forest of Jeollabuk-do located in Jangsu, South Korea. The causal agent of the pathogen was identified as Botryosphaeria dothidea based on morphology and sequence comparisons. This is the first confirmed report of B. dothidea causing branch dieback and canker on H. dulcis.

• Journal of Ecology and Environment
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• v.44 no.3
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• pp.115-125
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• 2020

Background: The phenomenon of tree dieback in forest ecosystems around the world, which is known to be associated with high temperatures that occur simultaneously with drought, has received much attention. Korea is experiencing a rapid rise in temperature relative to other regions. Particularly in the growth of evergreen conifers, temperature increases in winter and spring can have great influence. In recent years, there have been reports of group dieback of Pinus densiflora trees in Korea, and many studies are being conducted to identify the causes. However, research on techniques to diagnose and monitor drought stress in forest ecosystems on local and regional scales has been lacking. Results: In this study, we developed and evaluated an index to identify drought and high-temperature vulnerability in Pinus densiflora forests. We found the Drought Stress Index (DSI) that we developed to be effective in generally assessing the drought-reactive physiology of trees. During 2001-2016, in Korea, we refined the index and produced DSI data from a 1 × 1-km unit grid spanning the entire country. We found that the DSI data correlated with the event data of Pinus densiflora mass dieback compiled in this study. The average DSI value at times of occurrence of Pinus densiflora group dieback was 0.6, which was notably higher than during times of nonoccurrence. Conclusions: Our combination of the Standard Precipitation Index and growing degree days evolved and short- and long-term effects into a new index by which we found meaningful results using dieback event data. Topographical and biological factors and climate data should be considered to improve the DSI. This study serves as the first step in developing an even more robust index to monitor the vulnerability of forest ecosystems in Korea.

• Research in Plant Disease
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.49-55
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• 2017

The previous study showed that die-back of apple trees caused by soil-borne diseases was significantly high in the apple orchards in Chungbuk province. The correlation between dieback ratio and cultivation environment in apple orchards infected by soil-borne diseases was investigated in this study. The dieback ratio of five orchards diseased by violet root rot and five places infected by white root rot showed significantly positive correlation with Ca content and available $P_2O_5$ content in soil, respectively. Whereas, the dieback ratio of fourteen orchards diseased by Phytophthora root rot was not significant. Subgrouping of cultivation environment analysis showed that the slope degree of orchard and the number of fruit setting also affected the dieback ratio caused by violet root rot and Ca content in soil also affected the dieback ratio caused by white root rot. It showed that the slope degree, soil texture, Mg and Ca content affected the dieback ratio caused by Phytophthora root rot. These results can be applied to reduce die-back ratio by the modification cultivation environment for each soil-borne disease.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Environmental Restoration Technology
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.36-45
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• 2004

This study was conducted to formulate management guidelines for monumental old trees in Korea through analysis of growing environments. A total of 20 old trees designated as natural monuments in Seoul, Incheon, and Gyeonggi provinces were surveyed for biological characteristics, surrounding environments, root collar conditions, tree health, and soil characteristics. Relationships among root collar conditions, tree health, and soil characteristics were analyzed by correlation. The old solitary trees designated as natural monuments included Pinus bungeana(4 trees), Juniperus chinensis(3 trees), Ginkgo biloba(3 trees), Poncirus trifoliata(2 trees), Actinidia arguta, Wisteria floribunda, Thuja orientalis, Quercus variabilis, Sophora japonica, Fraxinus rhynchophylla, Zelkova serrata, and Pinus densiflora. The tree height ranged from 3.56 to 67m, and root collar diameter ranged from 1.01 to 15.2m. The monumental old trees were growing on the various sites ranging from gardens, historical sites, open agricultural fields, mountain hills, to near the ocean beaches and streams. The coverage of bald land ranged from 50 to 100%, and depth of filled soil around the root collar ranged from 0 to 50cm. Tree health was expressed as the amount of branch dieback, cavity development, detachment of cambial tissue, infliction by diseases and insects. The branch dieback ranged from 5 to 20%, cavity development ranged from 10 to 100$cm^3$, detachment of cambial tissue ranged from 5 to 45%, and infliction by diseases and insects ranged from 5 to 20%. Soil pH ranged from 5.9 to 8.3, organic matter contents from 12 to 56%, phosphorus contents from 104 to 618ppm, while soil compaction ranged from 7 to 28mm. Results of correlation analysis showed that coverage of bald land was the most serious factor to deteriorate the cavity development and detachment of cambial tissue. In addition, chemical properties of soils seemed to be related to the health of the trees.

• The Plant Pathology Journal
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• v.38 no.5
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• pp.513-521
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• 2022

Our study was carried out to determine the control efficacy of sodium hypochlorite (NaOCl) for violet root rot caused by Helicobasidium mompa in apple. The experiment was conducted in the farm located at Chungbuk province in South Korea from 2014 to 2016. When infected apple trees were treated at least two or three times with 31.25 and 62.5 ml/l available chlorine content in NaOCl, it greatly increased the rooting of rootstock, and restored the tree crown density by 44.4-60.5%. In addition, the number of commercial fruit setting was increased by 54.3-64.5%, and the total starch content in shoots was significantly higher than other non-treated apple trees. However, the untreated disease control and thiophanate-methyl WP treated trees showed the symptom of dieback. Therefore, our results indicate that the drenching treatment of NaOCl with 31.25-62.5 ml/l available chlorine content more than two times from late fall to early spring could effectively control the violet root rot and recover tree vigor up to 60%.