• Korean Journal of Environment and Ecology
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• v.35 no.5
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• pp.558-568
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• 2021

Poor supervision and tourism activities have resulted in forest degradation in islands in Korea. Since the southern coastal region of the Korean peninsula was originally dominated by warm-temperate evergreen broad-leaved forests, it is desirable to restore forests in this region to their original vegetation. In this study, we identified suitable areas to be restored as evergreen broad-leaved forests by analyzing the environmental factors of existing evergreen broad-leaved forests in the islands of Jeollanam-do. We classified forest lands in the study area into six vegetation types from Sentinel-2 satellite images using a deep learning algorithm and analyzed the tolerance ranges of existing evergreen broad-leaved forests by measuring the locational, topographic, and climatic attributes of the classified vegetation types. Results showed that evergreen broad-leaved forests were distributed more in areas with a high altitudes and steep slope, where human intervention was relatively low. The human intervention has led to a higher distribution of evergreen broad-leaved forests in areas with lower annual average temperature, which was an unexpected but understandable result because an area with higher altitude has a lower temperature. Of the environmental factors, latitude and average temperature in the coldest month (January) were relatively less contaminated by the effects of human intervention, thus enabling the identification of suitable restoration areas of the evergreen broad-leaved forests. The tolerance range analysis of evergreen broad-leaved forests showed that they mainly grew in areas south of the latitude of 34.7° and a monthly average temperature of 1.7℃ or higher in the coldest month. Therefore, we predicted the areas meeting these criteria to be suitable for restoring evergreen broad-leaved forests. The suitable areas cover 614.5 km², which occupies 59.0% of the total forest lands on the islands of Jeollanamdo, and 73% of actual forests that exclude agricultural and other non-restorable forest lands. The findings of this study can help forest managers prepare a restoration plan and budget for island forests.

• Journal of Soil and Groundwater Environment
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.70-78
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• 2004

The current study was undertaken to evaluate the hydrogeochemical implications of heavy metals (Cr, Cu, Pb, Zn) in both soils and groundwater in reclaimed lands of Sydney's 2000 Olympic Games site at Homebush Bay in Port Jackson, Sydney. The Olympic Games site can be divided into three areas, i.e. 'reclaimed areas' were previously estuarine, and were filled with waste materials and are now above present high tide level, whereas 'landfill areas' are areas where deposition of waste materials occurred above sea level. No deposition of waste took place in 'non-infilled areas'. 4513 soil core samples and 101 groundwater samples were analyzed for Cr, Cu, Pb, Zn. The mean heavy metal (Cr, Cu, Pb, Zn) concentrations in soils of the study area revealed the order of reclaimed (greatest), landfill and non-infilled area (smallest), whereas in groundwater it is all shown the order of landfill, reclaimed and non-infilled area, except for Pb. Mean Pb concentration in soils derived from the three land types at the Olympic Games site revealed the order of reclaimed area(174 $\mu\textrm{g}$/g), landfill area (102 $\mu\textrm{g}$/g) and non-infilled area (48 $\mu\textrm{g}$/g). Results reveal that soils contaminated by Cr, Cu, Pb and Zn in reclaimed/landfill areas are associated with dumped materials. No relationship could be established between soil and groundwater concentrations of heavy metals (Cr, Cu, Pb, Zn) in the landfill, reclaimed and non-infilled areas of the Olympic site, probably due to the varied nature of the materials deposited at the Olympic site.