• Ecology and Resilient Infrastructure
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• v.4 no.3
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• pp.123-129
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• 2017

This study aims to identify and reduce the gaps of understandings and thoughts of river restoration between river engineers and ecologists by logically re-examining the definition and value of river restoration. For this purpose, function, and goods and services of river ecosystem are analyzed based on the study of those by de Groot et al. (2002). From the result of this analysis, definitions and strategies of presently-known river restoration and its similar activities are re-examined. Next, presently-known river restoration models, ERM (Ecological restoration model), ARM (Amenity restoration model) and semi-ERM (semi-Ecological restoration model), are reinforced in their frameworks. This study is expected to narrow the gap, between the professionals of different fields, of their understandings and thoughts of river restoration.

• International Journal of Contents
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.34-41
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• 2012

The concept of vegetation freeboard equivalence (VFE) is presented from the comparison between the rise in stage with/without vegetation and the freeboard height under design discharge conditions. In South Korea, the freeboard height of large, medium and small rivers is defined as a function of river discharge. Two models are used for this analysis of flood stage with and without vegetation: the 1-D model HEC-RAS and the 2-D model RMA-2. Both models are applied to three river study sites of the Geum River in South Korea as representative sites for a large, a medium and a small river. The analysis shows that without vegetation, both models provide comparable results and the calculated results are in very good agreement with the design configuration. The vegetation effects on the medium river are less significant, and the freeboard is adequate to contain the rise in stage from the added floodplain vegetation in large rivers. The concept of vegetation freeboard equivalence is therefore useful for the analysis of flood river stages after the restoration of channels with increased floodplain vegetation.

• Journal of Ecology and Environment
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• v.48 no.1
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• pp.85-95
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• 2024

Background: In Korea, riparian zones and some floodplains have been converted into agricultural fields and urban areas. However, there are essential for maintaining biodiversity, as they are important ecological spaces. There are also very important spaces for humanity, as they perform various ecosystem services in a changing environment including climate change. Due to the importance of rivers, river restoration projects have been promoted for a long time, but their achievement has been insignificant. Development should be pursued by thoroughly evaluating the success of the restoration project. Ecological restoration is to accelerate succession, a process that a disturbed ecosystem recovers itself, with human assistance. Ecological restoration can be a test bed for testing ecological theories in the field. In this respect, ecological restoration should go beyond a 'simple landscaping exercise' and apply ecological models and theories in restoration practice. Results: The cross-section of the restored stream is far from natural rivers due to its steep slope and artificial material. The vegetation profiles of the restored streams did not reflect the flooding regime of the river. The species composition of the vegetation in the restored stream showed a significant difference from that of the reference stream, and was also different from that of an unrestored urban stream. Although species richness was high and the proportion of exotic species was low in the restored stream, the effect was offset by the high proportion of gardening and landscaping plants or obligate terrestrial plants. Conclusions: Based on both the morphological and ecological characteristics of the river, the restoration effect in the restored stream was evaluated to be very low. In order to solve the problems, a systematic adaptive management plan is urgently required. Furthermore, it is necessary to institutionalize the evaluation of restoration effects for the development of river restoration projects in the future.

• Journal of Korean Society on Water Environment
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• v.34 no.5
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• pp.447-461
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• 2018

To realize river restoration that ecological characteristics of the river are reflected, we classified the river into four reaches of valley stream, upstream, midstream, and downstream based on substrate as well as riverbed gradient obtained from the relationship between distance from the river mouth, and above sea level. Considering that the rivers of Korea have been dominated by various and intense artificial interferences over a lengthy period, we determined cross sectional range of the river based on the geological map and clarified transformation degree by reach. Vegetation profile diagram was prepared by depicting horizontal range and vertical stratification of major vegetation appearing in a belt transect of 10 m breadth installed between weirs constructed in both sides of the river. Restoration models by river reach were prepared based on breadth of waterway, bare ground, herb, shrub, and tree dominated vegetation zones on vegetation profiles wherein a flooding regime was reflected. Species composition information collected from vegetation established in each zone was systematized to use for restoring each reach ecologically. Further, background that longitudinal reaches and horizontal zones were divided, was discussed by comparing with case studies in foreign countries. In addition, necessity of ecological restoration of the river was discussed based on degree of integrity of Korean rivers, ecological significance of riparian vegetation, and importance of reference information for ecological restoration of the river.

• Journal of the Korean Regional Science Association
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• v.31 no.3
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• pp.39-54
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• 2015

To assess an economic value of Cheonggyecheon river restoration project, an in-depth exit survey data was collected to apply travel cost method in this study. Poisson model, Negative Binomial, Zero-truncated Poisson, and Zero-truncated Negative Binomial model were executed due to the nature of count data. Empirical results showed that regressors were statistically significant and corresponded to general consumer theory. Since our survey data showed over-dispersion, Zero-truncated Negative Binomial was selected as an optimal one to analyze travel demand of Cheonggyecheon by model goodness of fit test among those aforementioned empirical models. Estimating an economic value of Cheonggyecheon river restoration project, which is known as an ecological river restoration project, we used annual visit of individual traveler and an optimal model. Suffice to say that the annual economic value of Cheonggyecheon river restoration project was estimated as 193.4 billion won in 2013.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Landscape Architecture
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• v.30 no.3
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• pp.73-85
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• 2002

The purpose of this study was to develop prediction models for plant species abundance by stream restoration. Generally the stream plant is affected by stream gemophology. So in this study, the relationship between the vegetation abundance and stream gemophology was developed by multiple regression analysis. The stream characteristics utilized in this study were longitudinal slope, transectional slope, micro-landforms through the longitudinal direction, riparian width and geometric mean diameter and biggest diameter of bed material, and cumulated coarse and fine sand weight portion. The Pyungchang River with mountainous watershed and the Kyungan stream and the Bokha stream in the agricultural region were selected and vegetation species abundance and stream characteristics were documented from the site at 2~3km intervals from the upper stream to the lower. The Models for predicting the vegetation abundance were developed by multiple regression analysis using SPSS statistics package. The linear relationship between the dependant(species abundance) and independant(stream characteristics) variables was tested by a graphical method. Longitudinal and transectional slope had a nonlinear relationship with species abundance. In the next step, the independance between the independant variables was tested and the correlation between independant and dependant variables was tested by the Pearson bivariate correlation test. The selected independant variables were transectional slope, riparian width, and cumulated fine sand weight portion. From the multiple regression analysis, the $R^2$for the Pyungchang river, Kyungan stream, Bokga stream were 0.651, 0.512 and 0.240 respectively. The natural stream configuration in the Pyungchang river had the best result and the lower $R^2$for Kyunan and Bokha stream were due to human impact which disturbed the natural ecosystem. The lowest $R^2$for the Bokha stream was due to the shifting sandy bed. If the stream bed is fugitive, the prediction model may not be valid. Using the multiple regression models, the vegetation abundance could be predicted with stream characteristics such as, transection slope, riaparian width, cumulated fine sand weigth portion, after stream restoration.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.31 no.2B
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• pp.147-154
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• 2011

Physical habitat assessment models based on Instream Flow Incremental Methodology have been developed as a decision making tool to estimate appropriate discharge for environmental flow and water use management. These models, however, require extensive knowledge on various academic disciplines, complicated input data, and empirical data. We propose a Simplified Habitat (SIMHAB) simulation model for the estimation of physical structure of fish habitat and environmental flow at the planning stage. SIMHAB is applied to a river system for which physical and ecological data are available, and its applicability is investigated. Simulated results appeared to be similar to field survey data and those of such models as PHABSIM and River2D. However, SIMHAB requires much less input data. As such, the proposed model, SIMHAB can easily be applicable to river restoration projects including designing of physical habitat, estimation of environmental flow, and water resource management.

• Ecology and Resilient Infrastructure
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• v.3 no.4
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• pp.307-314
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• 2016

River restoration has recently been performed not only for the improvement of the artificial parts in the past but also for the restoration of abandoned river reaches which were blocked and isolated. For the restoration of abandoned river reaches, it is important to recover the hydraulic and ecological connectivity in the isolated space by longitudinal structures like levees. But because the assessment tools to determine whether the river restoration is performed properly are so rare at present, we aim to provide a tool for assessing ecological connectivity in a target river in this study. In the first step, one-dimensional numerical model for rainfall-runoff and channel routing was developed and then applied to the watershed of the Cheongmi Stream. In this step, a numerical model was developed to assess the restoration of connectivity. The model consists of two parts: one part is to convert the results of one-dimensional channel routing into two-dimensional spatial distribution. The other is to calculate the habitat suitability index according to time steps by using two-dimensional hydraulic features. The model was applied to a restoration area of the Cheongmi Stream. The advantage of this study is that two-dimensional hydraulic analysis can be easily obtained from one-dimensional hydraulic analysis without a complex and time-consuming two-dimensional analysis. HHS (Hydraulic Habitat Suitablility) by sections of target reaches and target species can be easily obtained using the results of this study.

• Journal of Ecology and Environment
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• v.36 no.4
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• pp.235-243
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• 2013

In Korea, where the plain land is greatly deficient as a mountainous nation, most of riparian zones were transformed into agricultural fields and urban areas. Excessive use of the land, which is close to river, makes the rivers enduring severe pollution stresses. Disappearance of riparian buffer, which plays a function of filter in the riverside, appears as a main factor aggravating water pollution of rivers. In this respect, it is imperative to restore the lost riparian vegetation. This study found out restoration models of riparian vegetation from the Bongseonsa stream, which has remnant riparian vegetation patches as a conservation reserve. Feasible reference information applicable for restoration of riparian vegetation was shown in the species level in the order of herb, shrub, and tree and sub-tree zones as far away from the waterway. Those information could contribute to restoring integrate and healthy rivers and streams beyond simple landscaping differently from the other restoration projects when they will be applied to the restoration project to be carried out in the future. In addition, the spatial range of river and stream, background that riparian zone disappeared in Korea, and application plan of the obtained reference information were discussed.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.349-357
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• 2011

This study has an objective to estimate effect on water-quality enhancement by removal of contaminated river-bed material using a two-dimensional numerical modeling in the Seonakdong River, the Pyunggang River and the Maekdo River. RMA2 and RMA4 models were used for flow and contaminant transport simulation, respectively. After the analysis of the effects of flow restoration plan for the Seonakdong River system made by Lee et al (2008), simulation have been performed about scenarios which contains operations of the Daejeo Gate, the Noksan Gate, the Makdo Gate (on planning), and the Noksan Pumping Station. Because there is no option for elution from bed sediment in the RMA4 model, a simple technique has been used for initial condition modification for elution. The analyses revealed that the effect on water quality improvement due to dredging of bed sediment seemed to be less than 10 % of the total effect. The most efficient measure for the water quality improvement of the river system was the linked operation of water-gates and pumping station.