• Journal of the Korean Society for Marine Environment & Energy
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.60-67
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• 2010

For sustainable use of the resources of uninhabited islands of Korea, their ecological economic potential needs to be fully integrated into their management policy and the carrying capacity of the islands should be evaluated before using or developing them. The emergy methodology was used to evaluate the ecological economic value and carrying capacity of Sungap-do which is an uninhabited island in Incheon, Korea. The system boundary for the emergy evaluation of the island included the sea area within 1km from the high tide level, following the management boundary for the uninhabited islands of Korea stipulated in the Law on the Conservation and Management of Uninhabited Islands. The total renewable emergy input to Sungap-do was $1.04{\times}10^{20}$ sej/yr from tidal energy. The annual ecological economic contribution of the island was evaluated high at 29.9 billion Em￦/yr. If Sungap-do were developed to the national average, its carrying capacity was 6,586 persons at the current living standard of Korea. The carrying capacity of Sungap-do for the long-term sustainability scenario was 2,337 persons at the same living standard as in the developed scenario. When only emergy contribution of the land area was considered, the carrying capacity of Sungap-do sharply decreased to 14 persons for the developed scenario and 5 persons for the long-term sustainability scenario. The carrying capacity of the uninhabited islands of Korea including Sungap-do, thus, needs to be considered from the initial stage of utilization or development projects to sustain the ecosystem benefits and their sustainable uses.

• Proceedings of KOSOMES biannual meeting
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• 2017.04a
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• pp.67-67
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• 2017