• Korean Journal of Soil Science and Fertilizer
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• v.39 no.1
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• pp.1-7
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• 2006

To designate rural landscape spatially, land use and topographic features for 383 of "Ri"s or "Dong", which is a basic administrative unit in Korea, were analyzed using GIS application. We have categorized rural landscape into three types such as agricultural, natural and urban landscape by land use. On the basis of spatial landscape pattern, rural area could be classified into 6 groups of Mountainous area (MA), Mountainous village area (MV), Developing mountainous village area (DM), Plain agricultural area (PA), Developing plain village area (DP) and Urbanized area (UA) according to the ratios of land for agricultural and urban use as the criteria. In MA, the ratio of upland area including orchard was slightly larger than that of paddy, while that of paddy was about 1.5 times larger than upland in other groups. Forested area was distributed more than two-thirds among natural landscape area in MA, MV and DM. In plain types (PA and DP), the ratio of irrigated paddy was extremely larger than partially irrigated paddy and the ratio of water body area among the natural landscape area was two times as large as that of forested area. The ratio of land for industrial and livestock facilities among urban landscape area were 20% or more in MV, DM and DP, and it means that these facilities are mainly distributed in the developing ru ral area where residents and industry are closely related each other. According to the relative ratio of sloped land of 6 categorized areas, the MA area have lots of land with E and F slopes and MV and DM have all grades of sloped land evenly distributed in relative to other types of rural landscape. It has been showed that PA, DP and UA occupied more than two-thirds of land with A or B slope. In case of the analysis of topological distribution in 6 types of rural landscape, there were overwhelmingly lager highland areas in MA. Conclusively, we have confirmed that 6 types of rural landscape classified by land use pattern in 3 categorized areas such as agricultural, natural and urban landscape area would be useful for the management of rural area. For development of sustainable agriculture and the preservation of rural amenity, proper management ways should be properly applied according to rural landscape patterns.