• Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.119-132
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• 2012

Biodiversity is a key element of ecosystem of which function provides essential product and service in human life. In the course since development projects often causes damages to biodiversity, environmental impact assessment technique must be capable of accurately assessing potential impact from flora and fauna and to entire ecosystem. Korea needs improvement of its assessment technique that is compatible with Korean environmental regulatory standard that is generally stricter than that of most countries. This study attempts to explore both domestic and overseas biodiversity assessment techniques and analyze each stage of environmental impact assessment. The data is collected from numbers of literatures selected by navigating both domestic and overseas literature database with certain keywords. Among the 44 selected papers, overseas publications outnumber those of domestics, and there are more researches on assessment methodology of biodiversity than assessment tool and model. In terms of environmental impact assessment, the number of papers on environmental impact forecast exceeds the numbers of papers on current state of environment and the impact minimizing solution. Therefore, contents and trends of those researches in the different stages of environmental impact assessment discussed in this paper not only suggest potential impact on biodiversity and minimization solutions in detail, but is also a valuable resource particularly for biodiversity relevant environmental assessment technique improvement in Korea. Proposing of a new direction of improvement in biodiversity assessment techniques makes this study significant, and further research for preservation of biodiversity should follow up to provide an improvement scheme for biodiversity assessment techniques in the future.

• Journal of Environmental Policy
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.91-104
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• 2008

In foreign countries, efforts are in progress to apply guidelines to minimize the loss of biodiversity within environmental assessment, yet those efforts have not been considered in Korea. If this continues, biodiversity in our nation will quickly diminish. Therefore, Korea needs to urgently prepare guidelines that minimize the loss of biodiversity. In this study 32 environmental impact assessment statements on express-highway construction projects were analyzed to evaluate potential problems with the current EIA system and to provide ideas on how to introduce a biodiversity/ecosystem item into the system. In the analyses of the 32 statements, few contents that deal with habitat/biodiversity were found and a lack of assessment of biodiversity issues was noticed in the EIA system in Korea. The system, therefore, should be improved to consider biodiversity issues in the survey, to predict impacts on biodiversity, and to establish corresponding mitigation measures.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Environmental Restoration Technology
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.1-11
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• 2023

By delivering effective, in-situ conservation of biodiversity, OECMs can contribute to sustaining existing biodiversity values and improving biodiversity conservation outcomes. In this study, for the reporting of OECMs required by Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, the site-level assessment of the Korea National Arboretum and Buffer Zones were conducted using the assessment tool of IUCN. The site-level assessment was carried out in three steps(step 1: screening, step 2 : consent for full assessment, step 3 : the full assessment). It was found that the criteria were satisfied except for the consent for full assessment, sustainability of governance and management arrangements, and the equity of governance and management. Although the governing authority, rights-holders or any other stakeholders could be identified, the step of acknowledging and agreeing to the full OECM assessment was not possible because the governance was not established. As a result of the assessment of equitable governance and management in the aspect of recognition, procedure, and distribution based on criterion(the equity of governance and management), it is judged that more specific measures are needed in the aspect of recognition. And in the aspect of procedure, there is no legal basis for participation in governance and collection of opinions, so it is judged that there is a limit to listening and reflecting the opinions of stakeholders. In the aspect of distribution, it is necessary to further confirm whether it provides direct benefits to rights-holders such as landowners in the region. And it is necessary to prepare specific criteria to assess the important biodiversity values. Therefore, in order to promote OECM reporting in the future, it is necessary to conduct detailed research on various types of governance establishment and operation plans that can establish the basis for recognizing and agreeing to OECM assessment, specific criteria and reasonable measures to judge equity, and important biodiversity value.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Environmental Restoration Technology
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.23-33
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• 2011

Habitats loss and fragmentation are major threats to biodiversity. There are various kinds of environmental assessment have been developed for various problems to solve. Yet, there are no well-developed methods for quantifying and predicting about biodiversity. To achieve a sustainable conservation for biodiversity, the structural diversity of forest must be assessed by proper indexes. This study aim to quantitatively assess the diversity of forest structure as habitats and results of the verification by bird survey for objective presentation of evidence. As a result of literature review, some indexes were selected as potential prediction tools for biodiversity; area of patch, area of core regions, shape of patch and average age of stand. The assessment results were estimated by monitoring of birds for accuracy verification and the results were almost in agreement with each others. But, 1 and 2 level of forests were showed ambiguous results. Certainly, this study was limited in some valuation indexes on landscape scale. Further studies should be considered that different environmental factors such as land use, disturbances by human and vegetation index. Also, we expect that the additional monitoring of birds should give rise to the result which is improved assessment results.

• Korean Journal of Ecology and Environment
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• v.56 no.4
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• pp.393-405
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• 2023

This study was conducted to select indicators for assessing national biodiversity. For this purpose, 140 biodiversity-related indicators were identified as a result of inventorying biodiversity-related indicators used in Korea and abroad, and when these indicators were applied to the pressure, status, and response indicator system, it was found that status indicators accounted for the largest number of indicators, with 29 pressure, 59 status, and 44 response. We also categorized the status indicators into genes, species, habitat, function, and quality, and found that species and habitat indicators accounted for the majority. Pressure indicators were categorized into direct exploitation, pollution, alien species, climate change, and habitat change. As a result, it was found that direct exploitation and pollution accounted for most of the pressure indicators. In addition, this study used internationally used indicator selection criteria to establish criteria for selecting domestic biodiversity assessment indicators. Using this list of indicators and indicator selection criteria, we evaluated the prioritization of domestically applicable biodiversity indicators through relevant expert consultations. 1) Vegetation class, 2) Land cover indicators, and 3) Change of protected area ranked highly. In fact, these indicators have been used in many studies due to the availability of assessable data. However, most of the highly scored indicators are based on ecosystem area, and further consideration of ecosystem functions and components(species) is needed.

• Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
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• v.19 no.6
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• pp.573-581
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• 2010

Natural ecosystem is an essential part to connect with the plan for biodiversity conservation in response strategy against climate change. For connecting biodiversity conservation with climate change strategy, Europe, America, Japan, and China are making an effort to discuss protection necessity through national biodiversity valuation but precedent studies lack in Korea. In this study, we made biodiversity maps representing biodiversity distribution range using species richness in National Forest Inventory (NFI) and Forest Description data. Using regression tree algorithm, we divided various classes by decision rule and constructed biodiversity maps, which has accuracy level of over 70%. Therefore, the biodiversity maps produced in this study can be used as base information for decision makers and plan for conservation of biodiversity & continuous management. Furthermore, this study can suggest a strategy for increasing efficiency of forest information in national level.

• Korean Journal of Environmental Biology
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.223-233
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• 2003

This paper introduces a study on the development of environment assessment technique and biodiversity management system for stream ecosystems and their application to Korean streams. Based on comprehensive field investigations from a series of streams of Bukhangang (North Han River) system as well as on long-term field survey and bibliographic data from streams throughout South Korea, schemes for environmental and biodiversity research of stream ecosystems aye reviewed; types of major environmental damages in Korean streams are classified; a rapid assessment technique for nature quality of stream ecosystems is presented; and a list of environmental and biotic factors for the use of GIS-based biodiversity management system in stream ecosystems is provided. The biodiveysity management system, which is based on ArcView and GEUS programs, is applied to Gapyeong Creek, a typical mid-size stream in Korea.

• Genomics & Informatics
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.90-92
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• 2015

Biological diversity, also known as biodiversity, is an important criterion for measuring the value of an ecosystem. As biodiversity is closely related to human welfare and quality of life, many efforts to restore and maintain the biodiversity of species have been made by government agencies and non-governmental organizations, thereby drawing a substantial amount of international attention. In the fields of biological research, biodiversity is widely measured using traditional statistical indices such as the Shannon-Wiener index, species richness, evenness, and relative dominance of species. However, some biologists and ecologists have difficulty using these indices because they require advanced mathematical knowledge and computational techniques. Therefore, we developed VBioindex, a user-friendly program that is capable of measuring the Shannon-Wiener index, species richness, evenness, and relative dominance. VBioindex serves as an easy to use interface and visually represents the results in the form of a simple chart and in addition, VBioindex offers functions for long-term investigations of datasets using time-series analyses.

• Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
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• v.20 no.5
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• pp.615-625
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• 2011

As United Nation (UN) declared 2010 to be the International Year of Biodiversity, the biodiversity issue has gained much attention since the issue of climate changes. Also, related researches for protecting and conserving the biodiversity are accompanied in the world. In this study, National Ecology Information is obtained from Ministry of Environment and Korea Forest Service and is utilized to valuate biodiversity and ecosystem services in Pyeongchang, Kangwon-do in Korea. For this, they are categorized into direct- or indirect-use value and nonuse value. Research results show that the biodiversity and ecosystem services in Pyeongchang are assessed as 2 trillion and 460 billion won. From this research, we evaluate the economic value of biodiversity and ecosystem services, and also suggest the possibility to utilize them as basic information for a decision making to establish the biodiversity protection plan.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Environmental Restoration Technology
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• v.16 no.5
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• pp.39-47
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• 2013

The agricultural area is a priority to develop than the natural area for land developments. However, the importance of agricultural biodiversity is emphasized recently. The agricultural area does not only provide food for human and habitat for wild life but also contribute to improve biodiversity. It is necessary to preserve the agricultural area with rich biodiversity. The study was conducted to analyze biodiversity of insects for conservation value assessment of agricultural areas. According to the results of field survey, there is higher biodiversity index in agricultural areas surrounding the forest or small size agricultural areas. By contrast, the index is lower in agricultural areas near roads or in the intensive agricultural area. The results show that there is high biodiversity in agricultural areas, especially margin agricultural area such as below 2ha and over slop rate of 15%. Therefore, further studies should be conducted field survey more to generalize for biodiversity in agricultural area, and establish the criteria to protect agricultural area from land developments.