• Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
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• v.29 no.6
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• pp.441-452
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• 2020

The assessment of the river environment is widely applied as a method to establish the purpose and direction of river rehabilitation projects. This includes surveying and assessing the current state of the river environment and determining whether a previous river project was properly executed. The city of Seoul executed ecological river rehabilitation activities for the tributaries of the Han River from the 2000s following a masterplan to recover the physical shape and ecological functionality of damaged rivers. After the rehabilitation activities, the river environment had been changed substantially. In this study, physical properties, water quality properties, and ecological properties were assessed for 28 tributaries underthe control of the city of Seoul, and then those 3 properties were synthetically reassessed. From the result of the study on the physical properties, it was found that mostrivers had II-III grades. As for water quality properties, rivers had III-IV grades. The damaged rivers showed low grades of D-E based on the Aquatic Ecosystem Health evaluation. Accordingly, we concluded that all rivers of Seoul City have an unhealthy environment in terms of water quality and Aquatic Ecosystem Health, therefore it is regarded that long-term and systematic improvements are required.