• Journal of Ecology and Environment
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• v.36 no.1
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• pp.31-38
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• 2013

Annual ring formation is considered a source of information to investigate the effects of environmental changes caused by temperature, air pollution, and acid rain on tree growth. A comparative investigation of annual ring growth of Cryptomeria japonica in relation to environmental changes was conducted at two sites in southern Korea (Haenam and Jangseong). Three wood disks from each site were collected from stems at breast height and annual ring growth was analyzed. Annual ring area at two sites increased over time (p > 0.05). Tree ring growth rate in Jangseong was higher than that in Haenam. Annual ring area increment in Jangseong was more strongly correlated with environmental variables than that in Haenam; annual ring growth increased with increasing temperature (p < 0.01) and a positive effect of $NO_2$ concentration on annual ring area (p < 0.05) could be attributed to nitrogen deposition in Jangseong. The correlation of annual ring growth increased with decreasing $SO_2$ and $CO_2$ concentrations (p < 0.01) in Jangseong. Variation in annual growth rings in Jangseong could be associated with temperature changes and N deposition. In Haenam, annual ring growth was correlated with $SO_2$ concentration (p < 0.01), and there was a negative relationship between precipitation pH and annual ring area (p < 0.01) which may reflect changes in nutrient cycles due to the acid rain. Therefore, the combined effects of increased $CO_2$, N deposition, and temperature on tree ring growth in Jangseong may be linked to soil acidification in this forest ecosystem. The interactions between air pollution ($SO_2$) and precipitation pH in Haenam may affect tree growth and may change nutrient cycles in this site. These results suggested that annual tree ring growth in Jangseong was more correlated with environmental variables than that in Haenam. However, the further growth of C. japonica forest at two sites is at risk from the long-term effects of acid deposition from fossil fuel combustion.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Environmental Restoration Technology
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.45-58
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• 2006

This study was aimed to propose the plan of creating a biotope reflecting an ecological education as well as its function as the habitats of amphibian in Namsan Urban Natural Park in Seoul. There were Cheonil mineral spring area which was located on the southern side of Namsan, wetlands which was already created on the east valley(800$m^2$) and a buffer area of the circumference(1,100$m^2$) as the biotope sites. Major fields of this study include a survey of the staus, a basic plan, a master plan; a survey of this site was focused on topography, water system, existing vegetation, wildbird, amphibian, trail; a detailed plan was focused on flow plan, planting plan, facility plan. Existing vegetation was classified into 8 types; Pinus densiflora forest, Pinus densiflora planted area, Prunus sargentii-Quercus spp. forest, Pinus rigida forest, Robinia pseudoacacia forest, artificial green space, wetlands, south beltway. There were Pinus densiflora planted area and Prunus sargentii-Quercus spp. forest as major vegetations of this site. 14 species and 33 individuals of wildbirds appeared, Rana temporaria ornativentris and Hynobius leechi were investigated in the wetlands.In particular, habitats of amphibian were divided eco-zone, buffer-zone and restore-zone, and habitats and facilities which would be suitable for the characteristics of each space were planned. As a result, environment elements of good habitats including spawn wetlands of amphibian, harbor of amphibian, water plant of wetland, wild shrubs forest, ecological landscape forest, wetland observation trail, fence of wetland protection and ramp by pebble and log were created at the site. The amphibian biotope of Namsan is rated high as an important space for conserving biodiversity. Accordingly, continuous monitoring of this biotope as a urban habitat is required as the environment changes.

• Journal of Korean Society of Forest Science
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• v.85 no.1
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• pp.66-75
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• 1996

This study was carried out to examine the forest fire effect on water storage characteristics in the forests. Water storage capacity of the burned area was analyzed by several major factors, such as soil pore, maximum water content, effective water storage, and percolation rate. The results obtained from the analysis of major factors are as follows; The deeper soil depth, the less total pore, coarse pore, effective water storage, and percolation rate. However, fine pore increased slightly in both burned area and control plot. As compared with control plot, burned area showed lower percolation rate, coarse pore, and effective water storage, but higher values of fine pore. Directly after forest fire, the soil pore is little affected. But as the time passes, top soil structure changes and soil pore also is affected even in a deep soil. Estimated effective water storage was lower at top soil of Namcheon and at deep soil of Namha in all the burned areas, but slowly decreased in deep soil compared to control plots. Therefore it was concluded that forest water storage capacity was greatly affected by the forest fire.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Surveying, Geodesy, Photogrammetry and Cartography
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.261-268
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• 2004

Analysis on forest through satellite image data can be obtained from normalized burn ration (NBR) and normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) from descriptive information of reflection on the earth's surface recorded each waveband. This study focuses on the efficiency of NBR through comparative analysis after obtaining NBR and NDVI of images form 1 you, 2 years and just after the forest fire and the time of forest-preserved of the area before the forest fire in Sacheon myeon, Cangneung City where the forest fro broke out. As a result, it shows dynamic changes with greater range that differences between NBR images rather than differences between NDVI images, which means it would be better to use NBR image for the analysis of the degrees of damages from forest fire or the status of vegetation restoration and also NBR image more distinctly shows both than NDVI image in forest fro damage area.

• Korean Journal of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.101-109
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• 2003

The study area, Kwangneung Experiment Forest (KEF) is located on the west-central portion of Korean peninsula and belongs to a cool-temperate broadleaved forest Bone. At the old-growth deciduous forest near Soribong-peak (533.1 m) in KEF, we have established a 1 ha permanent plot ($100m{\times}100m$) and a flux tower, and the site was registered as a KLTER(Korean long-term ecological research network) and DK site of KoFlux. In this site, we made a stemmap of trees and analyzed forest stand structure and physical and chemical soil characteristics, and estimated carbon budgets by forest components (tree biomass, soils, litter and so on). Dominant tree species were Quercus serrata and Carpinus laxiflora, and accompanied by Q. aliena, Carpinus cordata, and so on. As a result of a field survey of the plot, density of the trees larger than 2 cm in DBH was 1,473 trees per ha, total biomass 261.2 tons/ha, and basal area $28.0m^2$/ha. Parent rock type is granite gneiss. Soil type is brown forest soil (alfisols in USDA system), and the depth is from 38 to 66 cm. Soil texture is loam or sandy loam, and its pH was f개m 4.2 to 5.0 in the surface layer, and from 4.8 to 5.2 in the subsurface layer. Seasonal changes in LAI were measured by hemispherical photography at the 1.2 m height, and the maximum was 3.65. And the spatial distributions of volumetric soil moisture contents and LAIs of the plot were measured. The carbon pool in living tree biomass including below ground biomass was 136 tons C/ha, and 5.6 tons C/ha is stored in the litter layer, and about 92.0 tons C/ha in the soil to the 30 cm in depth. Totally more than about 233.6 tons C/ha was stored in DK site. These ground survey and monitoring data will give some important parameters and validation data for the forest dynamics models or biogeochemical dynamics models to predict or interpolate spatially the changes in forest ecosystem structure and function.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Environmental Restoration Technology
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• v.14 no.6
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• pp.119-130
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• 2011

Land-use changes have made considerable impacts on humans and nature such as biodiversity and ecosystem services. It is recognized as important elements for land use planning and regional natural resources conservation to identify the major causes of land use changes and to predict a process of changes and effects. This study, by using a spatially explicit Dyna-CLUE model, analyzed correlations between driving factors, quantified location characteristics of different land use types using logistic regression analysis and examined future land use changes and its effects in Yangpyeong and Yeoju region. We expected land use changes based on the three scenarios with different future land demands and simulated future changes for spatial variations of land use for the 20 years. The outcomes shows that larger change was found in agricultural areas than forest areas, based on the change in built-up areas. The changes in forest areas, which were mainly occurred in edge area, were expected to affect a large impact on its ecotone. It was found to be the importance of the management of forest edge and the necessity of the environmentally sound and sustainable development in order to conserve natural resources of the region.

• Journal of Environmental Science International
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• v.31 no.12
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• pp.1013-1025
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• 2022

This study was carried out to analyze water cycle characteristics and evaluate water retention function in Jeju Gotjawal forest from 2013 to 2017. The average ratio of throughfall, stemflow, interception loss in Seonhul Gotjawal (SH) and Cheongsu Gotjawal (CS) was 43.1%, 15.8%, and 41.1%, respectively. Rainfall-throughfall, rainfall-stemflow, and rainfall-interception loss were expressed as linear regression equation (p<0.001). The comparison results showed that SH was higher than CS (p<0.05), indicating that the canopy area had an important effect on the difference in stand structure. The average water resources retention rate of the Gotjawal region was 41.9%, which is similar to the total water resources retention rate (40.6%) of Jeju Special Self-Governing Province (JSSGP). Currently, the development of Gotjawal is in progress in JSSGP. The development of Gotjawal will lead to a decrease in the water resources retention rate due to changes in the surface environment such as an increase in impervious areas, which will affect the total groundwater content of JSSGP. Therefore, the conservation of the Gotjawal area is judged to be very important from the point of view of water conservation.

• Journal of Korean Society for Atmospheric Environment
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• v.2 no.3
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• pp.1-10
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• 1986

Nowadays, air pollution by increasing consumption of fossil fuels resulting from rapidly growing population and industrialization has caused the adverse effects on terrestrial ecosystems and become one of the most serious problems causing environmental discriptions. Air pollution such as $SO_2, HF, NO_X,$ fly ash, ozone and PAN might influence plant growth, reproduction, nutrient cycling, photosynthesis and predisposition to entomological and pathological stresses on plants. Furthermore, accumulation of those toxic substances in forests might cause subtle or serious changes in the structure and function of forest ecosystems. Since 1970s, a number of large industrial complexes had been constructed as a part of industrialization plan in Korea. Accordingly, the forest exosystems around them has been under chronic influences of air pollution and effects of air pollution on plants became a matter of concern. In Yocheon Industrial Complex which consisted of lots of petrochemical plants and a phosphatic fertilizer manufacturing plant, forests has been exposed to chronic air pollution, mainly HF and $SO_2$ gas, Various reports were available to investigate the potential effects of air pollution on crops and forest trees in Yocheon. Kim and Kim surveyed vegetation by naked eye method and reported 71 families, 150 genera and 158 species were growing within a 2 km from air pollution sources in 1981. Needle injuries on Pinus spp. in the polluted area water reported by Kim, et al. and Kim, et al. Kim, et al. investigated the primary production of Pinus thunbergii forests in the polluted area and verified that growth inhibition of Pinus thunbergii was attributable to air pollution. Thus, previous reports suggested that forest ecosystems around Yocheon Industrial Complex were influenced adversely by air pollution. The objective of this study was to investigate the subtle ecological changes in forest community exposed to chronic air pollution in Yocheon.

• Journal of Korean Society of Forest Science
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• v.103 no.4
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• pp.605-612
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• 2014

This study was conducted to predict the changes of yearly productive area distribution for Quercus mongolica under climate change scenarios. For this, site index equations by ecoprovinces were first developed using environmental factors. Using the large data set from both a digital forest site map and a climatic map, a total of 48 environmental factors including 19 climatic variables were regressed on site index to develop site index equations. Two climate change scenarios, RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5, were then applied to the developed site index equations and the distribution of productive areas for Quercus mongolica were predicted from 2020 to 2100 years in 10-year intervals. The results from this study show that the distribution of productive areas for Quercus mongolica generally decreases as time passes. It was also found that the productive area distribution of Quercus mongolica is different over time under two climate change scenarios. The RCP 8.5 which is more extreme climate change scenario showed much more decreased distribution of productive areas than the RCP 4.5. It is expected that the study results on the amount and distribution of productive areas over time for Quercus mongolica under climate change scenarios could provide valuable information necessary for the policies of suitable species on a site.

• Journal of Korean Society of Forest Science
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• v.110 no.4
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• pp.711-723
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• 2021

During the COVID-19 pandemic, social distancing affected daily life and leisure activities, including forest recreational activities. This study identified changes in people's participation in forest recreational activities and factors affecting their participation. It collected data from 1,000 samples through an online survey and analyzed it using a binary logit model with interaction terms. It was observed that there were decreases in the participation in visits to urban parks and green areas, outdoor activities in forests and mountains, and trips to mountain villages after the COVID-19 outbreak. People in their 40s, 50s, and 60s were more likely to decrease their participation in all kinds of forest recreational activities than those in their 20s. Moreover, higher household income earners were more likely to decrease their involvement in outdoor activities in forests and mountains. With respect to the place of residence, the residents in the Seoul metropolitan area were less likely to decrease their participation in trips to mountain villages than those outside this area. Thus, this study suggests that online forest recreation information services and forest management are needed to meet the demands of forest recreation for young generations and diversify the function of forests and rural areas as a safe leisurely space.