• Korean journal of applied entomology
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• v.52 no.3
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• pp.205-213
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• 2013

Forest fires disturb communities of forest-dwelling insects by killing or dispersal. Species diversity, species composition, and functional guilds of ant communities will be changed following forest fires. A survey of ants was conducted to find changes in ant communities after a large fire occurred in Goseong within Gwangwon province in South Korea in 1996. In total, 1,308 ants representing 16 species were collected; 696 ants representing 15 species were collected at the burned site, and 612 ants representing 13 species were collected at the unburned site. Contrary to the general expectation which predicts a decrease of diversity and abundance after fire, abundance, species diversity, species composition, and functional guilds of ant communities did not differ between the burned site and the unburned site. Furthermore, estimated species richness was significantly higher at the burned site than at the unburned site. However, monthly occurrences of ants (abundant species and pooled) were different between the burned site and the unburned site. Ants were more abundant at the burned sites than the unburned site just after the fire (May 1996). However, they were more abundant at the unburned site than the burned site in autumn (September and October 1996). This phenomenon might be caused by environmental change (e.g., decrease of soil moisture). In conclusion, the fire did not significantly change ant fauna, as fire in spring cannot destroy ant colonies that are wintering in deep soils.

• Journal of Ecology and Environment
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• v.38 no.3
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• pp.281-291
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• 2015

To clarify the effects of forest fire on the carbon budget of a forest ecosystem, this study compared the seasonal variation of soil respiration, net primary production and net ecosystem production (NEP) over the year in unburned and burned Pinus densiflora forest areas. The annual net carbon storage (i.e., NPP) was $5.75t\;C\;ha^{-1}$ in the unburned site and $2.14t\;C\;ha^{-1}$ in the burned site in 2012. The temperature sensitivity of soil respiration (i.e., $Q_{10}$ value) was higher in the unburned site than in the burned site. The annual soil respiration rate was estimated by the exponential regression equation with the soil temperatures continuously measured at the soil depth of 10 cm. The estimated annual soil respiration and heterotrophic respiration (HR) rates were 8.66 and $4.50t\;C\;ha^{-1}yr^{-1}$ in the unburned site and 4.08 and $2.12t\;C\;ha^{-1}yr^{-1}$ in the burned site, respectively. The estimated annual NEP in the unburned and burned forest areas was found to be 1.25 and $0.02t\;C\;ha^{-1}yr^{-1}$, respectively. Our results indicate that the differences of carbon budget and cycling between both study sites are considerably correlated with the losses of living plant biomass, insufficient nutrients and low organic materials in the forest soil due to severe damages caused by the forest fire. The burned Pinus densiflora forest area requires at least 50 years to attain the natural conditions of the forest ecosystem prior to the forest fire.

• Korean Journal of Agricultural Science
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• v.38 no.1
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• pp.25-30
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• 2011

This study was conducted to investigate changes on burned areas after a forest fire in Geyjoksan which occurred in April 2000. Both soil physicochemical properties and vegetation present were analyzed in burned and unburned sites of pinus densiflora according to two slope aspects(south and north-facing slopes). The results of the analysis are as follows. The appearance species of vegetation were 21, 15 and 18 for burned site, burned site-1 and burned site-2 of pinus densiflora community respectively, indicating that the occurrence of forest fire and slope aspects affect vegetation appearance. The pH values at 0~10cm soil depth of unburned and burned sites of pinus densiflora community were 5.04 and 5.12 respectively with no significant difference between them. Mean organic matter, total nitrogen and available P also had no significant difference. This results indicate that the forest recover its former pH, total nitrogen, mean organic matter and available P over time after a forest fire. North-facing slope had relatively higher soil water content thus implying that its pH values of soil lower than south-facing slope. On the other hand, south-facing slope had high organic matter and available P content of soil as compared to north-facing slope. With south facing slope having high water contents, humus was accumulated due to slow organic matter decomposition. The pH values also decreased due to organic acids from humus. However, we observed that organic matter and P concentration in soil increased.

• Journal of Korean Society of Forest Science
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• v.101 no.3
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• pp.488-500
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• 2012

The present study was carried out to evaluate arthropod predators (Araneae, Carabidae, Staphylinidae, and Formicidae) as bioindicator for forest disturbance. We selected 12 study sites according to disturbance intensities caused by fire intensity and recovery methods at Goseong, Gangneung, and Samcheok in Gangwondo. Intensities of disturbance were characterized as follows: 0 (no fire), 1 (surface fire), 2 (crown fire), and 3 (crown fire followed by reforestation). Arthropod predators were captured using pitfall trap. Species richness and abundance of Araneae, Carabidae, Staphylinidae, and Formicidae were not different along disturbance intensities. However, species richness and abundance of grassland ants significantly increased in higher disturbance intensities. Abundance of grassland ants such as Formica japonica and Camponotus japonicas linearly decreased along litter depth. Furthermore, ant communities were clustered along disturbance intensities. In a one-time survey, ants may be most useful as bioindicator for forest disturbance among the four predator taxa, because ants actively forage for long seasons.

• Economic and Environmental Geology
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• v.35 no.3
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• pp.285-297
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• 2002

This study was carried out to prove the factor properties of the soil affected by a forest fire through the physical and chemical analysis and the data from the conclusion of those analysis are applied to the development of technics that reduces a forest fire-induced 2nd damage. The forest fire was in December 2000 at Gangreung city and Donghae city, Gangwon provinces, Korea. Soil samples were collected at upper layers (0-5 cm) and bottom layers (5-40 cm) in November 2001 from the burned and control sites. Values of pH in burned soils of the upper layers affected by forest fire are higher than those in control soils. Both the fragments of fire-burned plant and differences of geological properties are resulted in a class of soil. Contents of organic matters in burned soils are higher than those in control soils, exceptionally the contents of organic matters in burned soils that contain coaly shale are lower than those in control soils. Weathering indices in burned soils are higher than those in control soils and it concerned with loss of soil. Iron ions Fe(Fe$^{2+}$ or Fe$^{3+}$) are easily extracted from the burned soils by rainfall, but Mn ions are straightly exist in the burned soils by physiochemical adsorption of colloid. Through the sequential extraction in the burned soils and control soils, we are certificate the extraction of Fe ions and the disturbance of Mn ions from the burned soils. As a consequence of factor analysis in burned soil and control soil, we are certificate that the influence of forest fire results in a disturbance of positive correlation factors.

• Fire Science and Engineering
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.8-13
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• 2012

This study suggests the water curtain nozzles as the way to protect important wooden cultural properties from an adjacent building fire or a forest fire. They are designed to block off the pyrolysis of timbers which occurs at $200{\sim}250^{\circ}C$ by forming a water curtain with the flow of water that spouts over a certain pressure from the bottom. The existing water curtain nozzles installed at the following sites were examined: NakSan-sa (Temple) in Gangwon-do (Province) and in Muwisa (Temple) in Jeollanam-do (South Province). As a way to improve and complement the system, this study designed nozzles with covers in order not to disrupt the landscape. Connected pipes are elevated and jet water when they are in use. Possible ways to install the connected elevating pipes to jet water effectively were investigated.

• Journal of computational fluids engineering
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.11-20
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• 2012

In this paper, the authors test various open codes and commercial codes based on CFD technology on the wind field around the complex terrain, which is a very important transport physics in the event of forrest fire. To study the physical mechanism inside the transition from surface fire to crown fire, the wake flow behind a parallel array of trees is studied numerically to show the flow separation in the turbulent boundary layer. Two sites near to Kunsan National University are chosen for the measurement of real wind field, and obtained data are compared with those from various computational codes such as Wind-Ninja, NIST-FDS, ANSYS-CFX, and ANSYS-FlUENT, etc. Through this research, feasibility and accuracy of the present CFD codes are investigated quantitatively, compared with the measured data with AWS.

• Journal of the Korean Association of Geographic Information Studies
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.21-36
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• 2019

Dead fuel moisture content is a key variable in fire danger rating as it affects fire ignition and behavior. This study evaluates simple regression models estimating the moisture content of standardized 10-h fuel stick (10-h FMC) at three sites with different characteristics(urban and outside/inside the forest). Equilibrium moisture content (EMC) was used as an independent variable, and in-situ measured 10-h FMC was used as a dependent variable and validation data. 10-h FMC spatial distribution maps were created for dates with the most frequent fire occurrence during 2013-2018. Also, 10-h FMC values of the dates were analyzed to investigate under which 10-h FMC condition forest fire is likely to occur. As the results, fitted equations could explain considerable part of the variance in 10-h FMC (62~78%). Compared to the validation data, the models performed well with R2 ranged from 0.53 to 0.68, root mean squared error (RMSE) ranged from 2.52% to 3.43%, and bias ranged from -0.41% to 1.10%. When the 10-h FMC model fitted for one site was applied to the other sites, $R^2$ was maintained as the same while RMSE and bias increased up to 5.13% and 3.68%, respectively. The major deficiency of the 10-h FMC model was that it poorly caught the difference in the drying process after rainfall between 10-h FMC and EMC. From the analysis of 10-h FMC during the dates fire occurred, more than 70% of the fires occurred under a 10-h FMC condition of less than 10.5%. Overall, the present study suggested a simple model estimating 10-h FMC with acceptable performance. Applying the 10-h FMC model to the automatic mountain weather observation system was successfully tested to produce a national-scale 10-h FMC spatial distribution map. This data will be fundamental information for forest fire research, and will support the policy maker.

• Korean Journal of Environment and Ecology
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• v.21 no.5
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• pp.400-414
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• 2007

This study has analyzed the vegetation structure to suggest a vegetation ecological restoration model by using the case of the afforestation for erosion control area with Pinus koreaiensis and Betula platyphylla, etc., on the hills of the Young-in mountains after its great fire in 2000. Of the area having a dimension of $1,152,404.3m^2$ selected as a survey site for the existing vegetation, the forest fire area accounted for 69.2% among which, brushwoods accounted the most for 24.67%. As a result of analysis of the 27 surveyed unit plots[unit dimension: $100m^2$] set up in consideration of the existing vegetation pattern and damaged state from the forest fire, the surveyed area was classified into 10 communities. Shrub layer's vegetation was found to be dominant in forest fire areas and the surveyed sites were classified into 5 plant communities, i.e. P. koraiensis community, Quercus variabilis community, P. thunbergii community, Q. serrata community, B. platyphylla community in forest fire areas, while non-forest fire areas were classified into 5 plant communities, such as P. densiflora community, Q. acutissima community, Q. serrata community, Q. mongolica-Q. serrata community, B. platyphylla community. Species diversity of forest fire areas was $0.3679{\sim}0.5907$ and that of non-forest fire areas was $0.5728{\sim}0.8865$. In addition, the number of the species in the forest fire areas was $5{\sim}8$ and that of non-forest areas was $8{\sim}12$; however, the population of forest fire areas$(156{\sim}456)$ was higher than that of non-forest fire areas$(61{\sim}227)$. In the analysis of growth density per layer$[of\;100m^2]$, there appeared $1{\sim}8$ trees of Q. mongolica and $3{\sim}5$ trees of Q. serrata in the upper layer species; $2{\sim}4$ trees of Q. serrata and one tree of Q. mongolica in the canopy layer. As for the characteristics of soil, acidity of forest fire areas was pH 5.45 and that of non-forest fire was pH 5.25. By setting up the middle D.B.H range of Q. mongolica-Q. serrata community as the vegetation restoration model, planting species, planting density and planting models are suggested.

• Korean Journal of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.114-124
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• 2014

For classifying fire damaged areas and analyzing burn severity of two large-fire areas damaged over 100 ha in 2011, three methods were employed utilized supervised classification, unsupervised classification and Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI). In this paper, the post-fire imageries of SPOT were used to compute the Maximum Likelihood (MLC), Minimum Distance (MIN), ISODATA, K-means, NDVI and to evaluate large-scale patterns of burn severity from 1 m to 5 m spatial resolutions. The result of the accuracy verification on burn severity from satellite images showed that average overall accuracy was 88.38 % and the Kappa coefficient was 0.8147. To compare the accuracy between burn severity and field survey at Uljin and Youngduk, two large fire sites were selected as study areas, and forty-four sampling plots were assigned in each study area for field survey. The burn severities of the study areas were estimated by analyzing burn severity (BS) classes from SPOT images taken one month after the occurrence of the fire. The applicability of composite burn index (CBI) was validated with a correlation analysis between field survey data and burn severity classified by SPOT5, and by their confusion matrix. The result showed that correlation between field survey data and BS by SPOT5 were closely correlated in both Uljin (r = -0.544 and p<0.01) and Youngduk (r = -0.616 and p<0.01). Thus, this result supported that the proposed burn severity analysis is an adequate method to measure burn severity of large fire areas in Korea.