Abstract
This study was performed to show criteria of a National Ecological Network (NEN) for South Korea and it was a part of a study of ecological network for broad areas on national land showed by Ministry of Environment of Korea. After 1970s, many european countries presented methods and criteria not on individual protected area but on networking among many habitats. The PEEN (Pan European Ecological Network) and NATURA 2000 are results of those. In South Korea, concepts and mapping metheods of ecological network was studied but those were not applied to the whole national land because the equality and local specialities were not reflected. So, in this study, we presented the criteria composed of forest, river, wildlife and coastal evaluation items in conservation ecology and showed the mapping method which can applied to the national land. After the evaluation on land area which composed of forest, river and wildlife axis. Core areas were $30,616km^2$, buffer zone were $21,870km^2$ and each accounted for 31% and 22% of the national land. Except for Taebaeck-Gangwon region, whole region's core areas were accounted for 20~30% of it and buffer zone were accounted for 20~25% of it, so these can be applied to the national land with equality and local specialities. Forest axis and river axis were clearly linear and connected, but the wildlife axis was dispersed in point form. Therefore, to apply the NEN, a detailed habitat map is important and the interconnected implementation of forest, river, wildlife, and coastal axis is required.
