• Toxicological Research
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• 제28권2호
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• pp.129-137
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• 2012

Probabilistic ecological risk assessment (PERA) for deriving ecological protective concentration (EPC) was previously suggested in USA, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and Netherland. This study suggested the EPC of cadmium (Cd) based on the PERA to be suitable to Korean aquatic ecosystem. First, we collected reliable ecotoxicity data from reliable data without restriction and reliable data with restrictions. Next, we sorted the ecotoxicity data based on the site-specific locations, exposure duration, and water hardness. To correct toxicity by the water hardness, EU's hardness corrected algorithm was used with slope factor 0.89 and a benchmark of water hardness 100. EPC was calculated according to statistical extrapolation method (SEM), statistical extrapolation $method_{Acute\;to\;chronic\;ratio}$ ($SEM_{ACR}$), and assessment factor method (AFM). As a result, aquatic toxicity data of Cd were collected from 43 acute toxicity data (4 Actinopterygill, 29 Branchiopoda, 1 Polychaeta, 2 Bryozoa, 6 Chlorophyceae, 1 Chanophyceae) and 40 chronic toxicity data (2 Actinopterygill, 23 Branchiopoda, 9 Chlorophyceae, 6 Macrophytes). Because toxicity data of Cd belongs to 4 classes in taxonomical classification, acute and chronic EPC (11.07 ${\mu}g/l$ and 0.034 ${\mu}g/l$, respectively) was calculated according to SEM technique. These values were included in the range of international EPCs. This study would be useful to establish the ecological standard for the protection of aquatic ecosystem in Korea.

• 환경영향평가
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• 제20권6호
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• pp.867-878
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• 2011

Development restriction areas (greenbelt areas) of Korea were recognized in 1970 as a means to control urban sprawl and conserve the natural environment. Although there have been some achievements, for a long time many planners and residents have requested a redefining of the green belt due to individual property rights restrictions and urban management problems. In fact, a lot of the greenbelt area is being destroyed by urban development. Therefore, conservation of ecological spaces in the green belt is needed to maintain urban naturalness. In this regard, this study suggests efficient methods to manage the greenbelt through the adoption of a landscape ecological value assessment. The greenbelt of the Seoul Metropolitan Area (SMA) is represented as the case study because there has been mounting pressure to develop the area in Korea. In this study, the assessment of the landscape ecology in the greenbelt area focuses on landscape structure and function. The assessment consists of the following steps: First, patches were derived by NDVI analysis using landsat remote sensing data. Second, characteristics of the patches were quantified by analyzing the landscape structure, such as patch size and shape index. Lastly, the gravity model and least cost path analysis to assess connectivity were applied to evaluate the landscape function in the green belt areas. The assessment result showed that 48.45% of green belt area should be conserved to maintain ecological stability and function. Moreover, major ecological networks were identified near the large patches in the northern and southern areas. However, relative low ecological values were identified in the western part of the green belt area due to the lack of green spaces. Furthermore, some development plans in the green belt were also identified near the conservation area. Based on these results, the restoration needed areas to enhance ecological value in green belt were displayed. This study suggests efficient management of the greenbelt area, which is disappearing as a result of urban development. The area for conservation chosen in this study should be managed carefully in urban planning. Finally, the results of this study can be used in green belt polices and plans for the promotion of ecological naturalness and stability.

• 한국환경복원기술학회지
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• 제11권1호
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• pp.1-13
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• 2008

This study review of Compositional Evaluation Items for Environmental Conservation Value Assessment Map (ECVAM) in Korea. The ECVAM is composed of legal assessment and environmental/ecological assessment items. ECVAM basically adapts an overlay method for environmental/ecological assessment items. The objective of this study is to suggest supplementary items for the ECVAM with the following process : Overlapping rates of the assessment items in the ECVAM are calculated to understand the grade distribution of the environmental conservation value assessment and to analyze the overlapping rates among the assessment items, as a result it is found that various items are overlapped each other. In order to reflect effectively each assessment item to the ECVAM, Analyzed the overlapping degree among assessment items to be applied to this map. On the concrete we gripped results to be assessed by various items, which were overlapped each other. In order to reflect effectively each assessment item to the environmental conservation value assessment map of national land, we analyzed the overlapping degree on environmental/ecological items, and investigated the grade distribution by field survey. In this study we assessed the ECVAM by 5 kinds of method. Method 1 is Grade 1 areas of each administrative district, Method 2 is Comparing overlapping areas of each assessment items Grade 1, 2 and Permission of each assessment items' duplication, Method 3 is Grade 1, 2 areas by only singular assessment items, Method 4 is Only Grade 1 areas of Method 2 and Method 5 is Only Grade 2 areas of Method 2. As results, Method 1 showed Seoul and other metropolitan cities reveal a high proportion of Grade I regions by the legal assessment items. Kangwon-Do, show a high proportion of Grade I regions by the environmental/ecological assessment item. Method 2 showed 93.4% of diameter Grade II(standard for stability), forest diameter item was accounted for 99.9% by Method 3, Method 4 showed 95.7% of forest diameter and forest density was accounted for 66.4% by Method 5. From now on, this study will contribute to reduce the complexity in the process of manufacturing ECVAM of National Land, and to raise the pliability in the process of managing and updating this map.

• 한국환경복원기술학회지
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• 제12권5호
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• pp.92-100
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• 2009

This study was surveyed from May to October, 2008 in order to classify type distribution and evaluate the function of inland wetland as a ecological axis in Chungnam province. Assessment was done by modified-RAM (Rapid Assessment Method). RAM is consisted of total 8 functions and divided into high, moderate, low. The conservation grade of RAM is divided into 4 grades; absolute conservation, conservation, improvement and restoration. Throughout survey on total 13 wetlands of Lacustrine, Palustrine wetland which are distributed in Chungnam province, their function was assessed. As result, the 2 wetlands were judged as absolute conservation grade by assessment of 8 functional contents, and 7 sites were improvement wetlands and 4 sites were conservation wetlands. The function of wetlands assessed as conservation grade showed high in water quality protection and improvement. Also, showed high in vegetation diversity, wildlife habitat and aesthetic recreation. Meanwhile, showed low in Water quality purification, Shoreline/Stream Bank Protection. Of wetlands evaluated as conservation grade, Jeong-juk Ji and Dun-ri reservoir were assessed as absolute conservative area. These wetlands are essential to be managed continuously as a area having high ecological value. Farther, these wetlands will be done as a axis of ecological network related to 'Kumbuk jeongmaek' ecosystem.

• 한국물환경학회지
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• 제24권5호
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• pp.592-597
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• 2008

Current water quality standard (WQS) in Korea is based on the protection of human health, not considering the protection of aquatic organisms. Most of chemicals can be toxic to ecological biota as well as human. Health of aquatic biota is closely related to the human health via food chain, therefore ecological risk based-WQS needs to be developed to protect the aquatic ecosystem. In this study, we selected the 31 chemicals in the Project entitled 'Development of integrated methodology for evaluation of water environment'. The methodology for calculating water quality criteria was derived from the Australian and New Zealand processes for deriving guideline trigger value for aquatic ecosystem. The available ecotoxicity data were collected from US EPA's ECOTOXicology Database (ECOTOX), TOX-2000 Database, European Chemicals Bureau (ECB)'s International Uniform Chemical Information Database (IUCLID) and Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA)'s report 'Ambient Water Quality Criteria (AWQC)'. The aquatic toxicity data for the Korean species were selected for risk assessment to reflect the Korean water environment. The monitoring values were calculated from the water quality monitoring data four main Korean rivers. We suggested the order of priorities of chemicals based on ecological risk assessment. We expect that these results can be useful information for establishing the WQS for the protection of aquatic ecosystem.

• 한국환경보건학회지
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• 제43권5호
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• pp.412-421
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• 2017

Objectives: To establish a system for integrated risk assessment of EDCs in Korea, infrastructure for providing toxicity data of ecological media should be established. Some systems provide soil ecotoxicity databases along with aquatic ecotoxicity information, but a well-structured ecotoxicity database system is still lacking. Methods: Aquatic and soil ecotoxicological information were collected by a toxicologist based on a human readable data (HRD) format for collecting ecotoxicity data that we provided. Among these data, anomalies were removed according to database normalization theory. Also, the data were cleaned and encoded to establish a machine-readable data (MRD) ecotoxicity database system. Results: We have developed a multi-purpose ecotoxicity database model focusing on EDCs, ecological species, and toxic effects. Also, we have constructed a web-based data searching system to retrieve, extract, and download data with greater availability. Conclusions: The results of our study will contribute to decision-making as a tool for efficient ecological risk assessment of EDCs in Korea.

• 환경영향평가
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• 제15권6호
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• pp.385-394
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• 2006

Land resources should be managed not only for human utilizations but also for environmental preservation. Based on that, environmental capacity should be estimated in both environmental and developmental ways. This study was performed for developing an estimation model for relative environmental capacity, considering both Development Tolerance Index(DTI), which shows environmental and ecological conservation value and is based on national environmental assessment indicators of the Korea Ministry of Environment, and Development Attractiveness Index(DAI), which shows topographical characteristics and geographical accessibility. The relative environmental capacity in this study can be helpful to coping with the conflict in planning and managing the use of land resources. The relative environmental capacity in this study, however, did not include either environmental or ecological sensitivity of land resources. This limitation should be solved through further research.

• 한국환경복원기술학회지
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• 제14권1호
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• pp.11-22
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• 2011

This study was established to build and suggest the Ecological Performance Standards for replaced wetlands as the mitigation strategies for the construction projects. The request performance and assessment factors and standards were derived by bibliographic review and verified by the field survey for the reference wetlands. And the weights for each factor were derived by AHP(Analytical Hierarchy Process) method. The results are as follows : 1) Assessment factors were induced by in-depth research of many wetland assessment models and benchmarks evaluated ecological functions. This study proposed final 12 assessment factors through ecological specialist and experts interviews added with literature analysis. 2) 10 natural wetlands were selected as Reference Wetlands as the measure to propose assessment factors and assessment criteria. Those reference wetlands are well-conserved inland natural wetlands classified to the one having worthy to conserve (grade "high") according to RAM(Rapid Assessment Method). Reference wetlands chosen by the study are Parksilji, Jeongyangji, Mulkubi, Bawineupkubi, Jilnalneup, Jinchonneup, Doomoso, Haepyung wetland, Whangjeong wetland, and Whapo wetland. The research developed assessment criteria for the performance assessment factors based on several explorations of the reference wetlands. 3) "Requiring performance" of replaced wetlands is defined as "to carry out similar or same ecological functions provided by natural wetlands", in overall. The detailed requiring performances are as follows; ${\bullet}$ to play a role of wildlife habitats ${\bullet}$ to have biological diversity ${\bullet}$ to connect with other ecosystems ${\bullet}$ to provide water environment to perform good ecological functions 4) The assessment factors for required performance are categorized by wildlife habitat function, biological diversity, connectivity of adjacent ecosystem, and water environment. Wildlife habitat category is consisted of wildlife habitat creation, size of replacement wetland, and site suitability. Biological diversity category contains the number of plant species, the number of wildlife species, and number of protected species as the sub-factors. Connectivity of adjacent ecosystem is comprised of wildlife corridor, green network and distance from other ecosystem. Finally, water environment make up with water quality, depth of water body, and shape of waterfront. 5) Finally, every assessment factors were verified and weighted by the AHP methods and the final standards were proposed. The weights of factors of requiring performance suggested as habitat (0.280), connectivity (0.261), diversity (0.260), hydraulic environment (0.199). And those of detailed sub-factors are site suitability (0.118), protected species (0.096), distance to neighbor ecosystem (0.093), habitat creating (0.091), green corridor (0.090) etc.

• 한국환경복원기술학회지
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• 제21권1호
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• pp.145-155
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• 2018

Problems and improvement plan in ecological pathways created by Environmental Impact Assessment(EIA) were found based on 504 expost environmental impact survey reports submitted to the National Institute of Ecology in 2016. A total of five improvement plans have been proposed. First, the concept and composition principle of ecological pathways should be unified. Second, Guidelines for consultation on the EIA should be provided for each stage to be applied on-site. Third, if ecological pathway is constructed differently than the consultation, the punishment clauses should be applied to prevent formal composition of ecological pathways. Fourth, We need to prepare measures to strengthen basic research for the installation of ecological pathways. Fifth, We need to strengthen the expost inspection function to compensate for the poorly created of ecological pathways. It is believed that the problems of ecological pathways created by consultation on environmental impact assessment could be corrected in the future. And it is deemed possible to systematically manage ecological pathways.

• Proceedings of the National Institute of Ecology of the Republic of Korea
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• 제1권1호
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• pp.68-73
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• 2020

Korean fir (Abies koreana) is an evergreen coniferous tree species that is unique to South Korea. A. koreana is found in a limited sub-alpine habitat and is considered particularly vulnerable to climate change. Identification of populations vulnerable to climate change is an important component of conservation programs. In this study, a heat stress-induced transcriptome RNA-seq dataset was used to identify a subset of six genes for assessment as candidate marker genes for ecologically vulnerable populations. Samples of A. koreana were isolated from ecologically stable and vulnerable regions of the Halla and Jiri mountains, and the expression levels of the six candidate markers were assessed using quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction. All six of the candidate genes exhibited higher expression levels in samples from vulnerable regions compared with stable regions. These results confirm that the six high temperature-induced genes can be used as diagnostic markers for the identification of populations of A. koreana that are experiencing stress due to the effects of climate change.