Abstract
It was required to evaluate ecological restorations in a comprehensive way in order to systematically manage conservation areas such as DMZ and national parks in South Korea. In this research we developed a new approach to evaluating ecological restorations with more various indexes than vegetation covering-related indexes. By analyzing damaged areas in the vicinity of DMZ, major damaged types were identified as six classes: landform modification, surface loss, soil pollution, soil physio-chemical modification, vegetation decline and vegetation damaged. From literature review, 39 indexes were selected and were grouped into four divisions: soil property, vegetation growth & structure, habitat property and landscape structure & functions. By conducting a survey with the selected indexes targeting relevant experts, data on relative importance among the divisions and indexes by damaged type were collected. As a result, it was found that the orders and values of weighted values of the divisions were different by damaged type: for example, soil property (0.402), vegetation growth & structure (0.209), habitat property (0.225), landscape structure & function (0.163) for "landform modification"; but soil property (0.171), vegetation growth & structure (0.401), habitat property (0.270), landscape structure & function (0.158) for "vegetation decline". Similarly, evaluation indexes showed different orders and values of relative importance, easiness in field measurement and representativeness for the division by damaged type, and the values were used for calculating importance factor for each index. In the evaluation table, score1 and score2 were made by the importance factors of indexes multiplied by distribution values which present grades and by the weighted values of divisions. In conclusion, while dealing with the damaged type was considered significant for evaluating and managing restorations, further tests on this table with a range of cases were needed to improve its quality.
