• Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.144-155
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• 2020

This research developed an approach to identify ecologically important areas at local scales and explained how the results of this approach could contribute to extend the protected areas in the Republic of Korea (ROK). While most developed countries have considered various biotic and abiotic factors, ecological processes, migration routes, habitat connectivity, ecosystem services, and etc. to determine the protected areas, ROK has considered a few factors focusing on biodiversity, landscape, and the habitats of endangered organisms. However, for sustainable management of our nature, we need comprehensive understanding of various ecosystem factors and interactions among them at local scales in designating protected areas. Forthis, we developed a conceptual model based on the ecological engineering approach and then explained how the results of this approach could contribute to extend the protected areas. In particular, we considered future land-use and climate change in determining the priority areas for novel protected areas. Our research suggested an effective methodology 1) to include various ecosystem factors and 2) to consider future environmental changes as well as current environmental conditions in finding the ecologically important areas and prioritizing these areas. However, our approach has limitations on the real-world applications due to the lack of fundamental information and data on our ecosystems. To improve the effectiveness of our approach in the real-world applications, we need various long-term ecological research results, environmental and ecological monitoring data, and both current and future spatial environmental data.

• Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
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• v.24 no.6
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• pp.593-606
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• 2015

This study was intended to develop Korean Environmental Sustainable City Index (ESCI) so that local governments can examine and identify urban environment issues and then come up with a policy to improve the environment and urban biodiversity for cities. Green City Index (GCI), Environmental Performance Index (EPI), and City Biodiversity Index (CBI) which have used worldwide were analyzed. Based on the result of analysis, evaluation indicators of ESCI were finally a total of 20 indicators under four categories, which are native biodiversity, living environment, ecosystem services, and governance and management. Then, five cities with biotope mapping and evaluation index were selected to apply ESCI for evaluation. In order to apply ESCI, local governments need to accumulate basic data. There should be a policy which requires local governments to build data for biotope mapping so that the rate of natural area, ecological network and permeable land surface can be evaluated. Indicators must be applied to be compliant with scale of the city and level of data building gradually.

• Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.13-24
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• 2011

This study was carried out to analyze ecological characteristics and select target species for effective restoration plans of wildlife corridors at Galmachi of Sungnam City. The actual vegetation in study area was physiognomically mixed with deciduous broad leaved forests dominated by oaks and artificially planted species. And it is a secondary forest formatted by sprout originated stand and being on early succession stage as a young stand. So study site was regarded as not suitable for the habitats for wildlife. The number of mammal species at study site was total 22 species, but most of these species were found as not so many in individual numbers. The individual number of hare was approximately 4 to 8, while the raccoon dog and water deer with 2 to 3 and 1 to 2, respectively. As such, it was estimated as a low population density due to discontinuation of ecosystem and the man-made impacts. In this study, raccoon dog and water deer were selected as the target species because of their migration patterns and ecological value in local ecosystem. It was suggested to establish a wildlife corridors of an over-bridge type at the peak area of Galmachi, known to be the mostly-used migratory route for 2 target species.

• Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
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• v.22 no.6
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• pp.677-693
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• 2013

IPCC showed that calculation of climate vulnerability index requires standardization process of various proxy variables for the estimation of climate exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity. In this study, four different methodologies of standardization methods: Z-score, Rescaling, Ranking, and Distance to the reference country, are employed to evaluate climate vulnerability-VRI (Vulnerability-Resilience Indicator) over Korean peninsula, and the error ranges of VRI, arising from employing the different standardization are estimated. All of proxy variables are provided by CCGIS (Climate Change adaptation toolkit based on GIS) which hosts information on both past and current socio-economic data and climate and environmental IPCC SRES (A2, B1, A1B, A1T, A1FI, and A1 scenarios) climate data for the decades of 2000s, 2020s, 2050s, and 2100s. The results showed that Z-score and Rescaling methods showed statistically undistinguishable results with minor differences of spatial distribution, while Ranking and Distance to the reference country methods showed some possibility to lead the different ranking of VRI among South Korean provinces, depending on the local characteristics and reference province. The resultant VRIs calculated from different standardization methods showed Cronbach's alpha of more than 0.84, indicating that all of different methodologies were overall consistent. Similar horizontal distributions were shown with the same trends: VRI increases as province is close to the coastal region and/or it close toward lower latitude, and decreases as it is close to urbanization area. Other characteristics of the four different standardization are discussed in this study.

• Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
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• v.33 no.2
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• pp.74-83
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• 2024

This study aims to estimate roadkill occurrences and investigate influential factors in Chungcheongnam-do, contributing to the establishment of roadkill prevention measures. By comprehensively considering weather, road, and environmental information, machine learning was utilized to estimate roadkill incidents and analyze the importance of each variable, deriving primary influencing factors. The Gradient Boosting Machine (GBM) exhibited the best performance, achieving an accuracy of 92.0%, a recall of 84.6%, an F1-score of 89.2%, and an AUC of 0.907. The key factors affecting roadkill included average local atmospheric pressure (hPa), average ground temperature (℃), month, average dew point temperature (℃), presence of median barriers, and average wind speed (m/s). These findings are anticipated to contribute to roadkill prevention strategies and enhance traffic safety, playing a crucial role in maintaining a balance between ecosystems and road development.

• Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.296-306
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• 2016

There is a growing interest in establishing a regional climate change adaptation policy as the climate change impact in the region and local scale increases. This study focused on the analysis of 32 regions on its characteristics of local climate change adaptation plans. First, statistic program R was used for conducting cluster analysis based on the frequency and budgets of adaptation plan. Further, we analyzed damage frequency from newspapers regarding climate change impacts in eight categories which were caused by extreme weather events on 2,565 cases for 24 years. Lastly, the characteristics of climate change adaptation plan was compared with damage frequency patterns for evaluating the adequacy of climate change adaptation plan on each cluster. Four different clusters were created by cluster analysis. Most clusters clearly have their own characteristics on certain sectors. There was a high frequency of damage in 'disaster' and 'health' sectors. Climate change adaptation plan and budget also invested a lot on those sectors. However, when comparing the relative rate among regional governments, there was a difference between types of damage and climate change adaptation plan. We assumed that the difference could come from that each region established their adaptation plans based on not only the frequency of damage, but vulnerability assessment, and expert opinions as well. The result of study could contribute to policy making of climate change adaptation plan.

• Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
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• v.31 no.5
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• pp.321-333
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• 2022

In this study, the concentration and distribution characteristics of BTEX (benzene toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylene) emitted from Daesan Petrochemical Industrial Complex were examined to determine their potential hazards to local residents. Residents living nearby the complex areas may be exposed to the chemicals through various media (air, water, and soil), especially by air. This study evaluated human health risks by inhalation using both deterministic and probabilistic risk assessment approaches. As a result of the deterministic risk assessment, the non-cancer risk was much lower than the regulation limit of hazard index (HI 1.0) for all the points. However, in case of cancer risk evaluation, it was found that the risk of excess cancer for benzene at point A located in the industrial complex was 2.28×10^-6, which slightly exceeded the standard regulatory limit of 1.0×10^-6. In addition, the probabilistic risk assessment revealed that the percentile exceeding the standard of 1.0×10^-6was found to be 45.3%. The sensitivity analysis showed that exposure time (ET) had the greatest impact on the results. Based on the risk assessment study, it implied that ethylbenzene, toluene, and xylene had little adverse effects on potential human exposure, but benzene often exceeded the cancer risk standard (1.0×10^-6). Further studies on extensive VOCs monitoring are needed to evaluate the potential risks of industrial complex areas.

• Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.25-40
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• 2016

This study suggests direction of new ordinance establishment for the future national application of Low Impact Development(LID) by analyzing current LID-related regulations of local governments, substantial agents to install and maintain a facility, through qualitative and quantitative methodologies. Four key words related to LID were derived from advisory conference and then ninety nine ordinances as the LID-related regulations were extracted to analyze. The study shows that rainwater-related ordinance passed in the middle of 2000s are being merely converted to the law on the promotion and support of water reuse. Regulations on water cycle and LID exist only in three cities nationwide(Seoul City, Suwon City and Namangju City). Interview with administrators of three cities to have LID-related regulations revealed following results. First, both rainwater and water reuse related regulations have not considered regional characteristics such as rainfall intensity, effects of impervious and merely followed guidelines by Ministry of Government Administration and Home Affairs. Second, existing ordinance is confined to specific facilities and thus cannot include the concept of LID which covers land and space utilization. Therefore, for proper application of LID, this study proposes issue of ordinance that resembles Seoul City ordinance and a new guideline that can reflect regional characteristics such as rainfall and location.

• Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
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• v.33 no.3
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• pp.131-141
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• 2024

The environmental impact assessment have been played important role for sustainable development of the country. Meantime, various studies have been conducted for scientific and effective environmental impact assessment. Howeverthe quantitative data such as regional distribution status and development characteristics according to the type of development project, environmental changes due to development projects, and spatial-temporal changes are insufficient, currently. In this study, we investigated the eco-friendliness of major development projects (industrial complex, urban development, tourist complexes, and waste disposal equipments) by integrating the EA-INDEX of each development projects which were reported by prior researches. As a result, we found that the eco-friendliness of development projects tended to gradually increase overtime due to the increase in eco-friendliness in the protection of living environment sector. The protection of living environment sector was a major factor in the the eco-friendliness of industrial complexes and urban development projects. In the case ofroad construction, landfill and tourist complex development projects, the natural environment conservation sector was a major factor in the eco-friendliness of the project. As a result of analyzing the eco-friendliness of development projects by local government, the eco-friendliness of development projects promoted and implemented in Ulsan, Jeonnam, and Gwangju was higher compared to other regions, and it was relatively low in Daejeon, Gyeongnam, and Daegu. This study is considered to be significant in that it conducted a quantitative analysis of the eco-friendliness of development projects carried out over a relatively long period of time throughout South Korea by dividing them by year and local government.

• Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.296-314
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• 2014

In recent years, Ministry of Environment (MOE) has been implementing a phased strengthening of the effluent standards for sewage treatment plants. In this regard, a comprehensive system should be developed to help check the appropriateness of such standards by specifying the grounds for standard-setting and investigating the current operation of sewage treatment plants clearly. It is necessary to establish a new standard-setting system for the effluent that is in a closer connection with the environmental criteria and rating systems. In the United States, the federal government provides guidelines on the least provisions and requirements for the Publicly Owned Treatment Works (POTWs). Local governments set the same or stricter guidelines that reflect the characteristics of each state. In Japan, the sewage treatment plants are subject to both the effluent standards and the discharge acceptable limits to pubic waters under the sewerage law. Specific requirements and limits are set in accordance with local government regulations. The European Union imposes sewage treatment plants with different provisions for effluent standards, depending on the sensitivity of public waters to eutrophication. The effluent standards for sewage treatment plants are classified by pollutant loads discharged to receiving waters. MOE also needs to introduce systems for setting new parameter standards on a POTW effluent by applying statistical means and treatment efficiencies or optimal treatment techniques, as seen in the cases of the US National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) or the EU Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control (IPPC).