• Journal of Forest and Environmental Science
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• v.34 no.3
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• pp.246-248
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• 2018

Urban development and population have augmented the increase of impervious land-cover. This phenomenon has amplified the effects of climate change and increasing urban island effects due to increases in urban temperatures. Seoul, South Korea is one of the largest metropolitan cities in the world. While land uses in Seoul vary, land cover patterns have not changed much (under 2%) in the past 10 years, making the city a prime target for studying the effects of land cover types on the urban temperature. This research seeks to generalize the urban temperature of Seoul through a series of statistical tests using multi-temporal remote sensing data focusing on multiple scales and typologies of green space to determine its overall effectiveness in reducing the urban heat. The distribution of LST values was reduced as the size of urban forests increased. It means that changing temperature of large-scale green-spaces is less influenced because the broad distribution could be resulted in various external variables such as slope aspect, topographic height and density of planting areas, while small-scale urban forests are more affected from that. The large-scale green spaces contributed significantly to lowering urban temperature by showing a similar mean LST value. Both of concentration and dispersal of urban forests affected the reduction of urban temperature. Therefore, the findings of this research support that creating urban forests in an urban region could reduce urban temperature regardless of the scale.

• Journal of Ecology and Environment
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• v.34 no.4
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• pp.347-355
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• 2011

Effects of forest thinning on community level properties have not been understood yet in Korea. We investigated regeneration patterns and trajectories after a disturbance by applying a chronosequence approach. Light availability, litter and woody debris cover, and species composition were determined for twenty 50 m line-transect samples representing a disturbance duration gradient (within 11 years). Environmental factors such as light availability and coverage of woody debris and litter changed abruptly after thinning and then returned to the pre-disturbance state. Although species richness was gained at shrub and ground layer in a limited way in both forests, cover of various functional types revealed diversity in their responses. Notably, Alnus firma stands exhibited a larger increment of cover in woody plants. Ordination analysis revealed different regeneration trajectories between natural and planted stands. Based on ordination analysis, rehabilitated stands showed movement to alternative states compared with natural ones, reflecting lower resilience to perturbation (i.e., lower stability). Our results suggest that community resilience to artificial thinning depends on properties of the dominant species. But to get more explanatory ecological information, longer-term static observations are required.

• Proceedings of the KSRS Conference
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• 2007.10a
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• pp.325-328
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• 2007

We discuss the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) of the forest canopy and floor separately based on airborne spectral reflectance measurements and simultaneous airborne land surface images acquired around Yakutsk, Siberia in 2000. The aerial land surface images were visually classified into four forest types: no-green canopy and snow floor (Type-1), green canopy and snow floor (Type-2), no-green canopy and no-snow floor (Type-3), and green canopy and no-snow floor (Type-4). The mean NDVI was calculated for these four types. Although Type-2 had green canopy, the NDVI was rather small (0.17) because of high reflection from the snow cover on the floor. Type-3, which had no green canopy, indicated considerably large NDVI (0.45) due to the greenness of the floor. Type-4 had the largest NDVI (0.75) because of the greenness of both the canopy and floor. These results reveal that the NDVI depends considerably on forest floor greenness and snow cover in addition to canopy greenness.

• Journal of Korean Society of Forest Science
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• v.104 no.2
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• pp.239-247
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• 2015

Since 2006, new national forest inventory in Korea has been restructured to assess current status and and monitor the changes in forest resources based on permanent sample plots. The objective of estimate this study is to assess changes in forest resources such as land use/cover categories and forest stand variables. For this study, permanent plot data were collected between 2006-2008 and 2011-2013 in Chungcheongbuk-do, respectively. In order to produce land use/cover change matrix which plays an important role as an activity data for estimating GreenHouse Gas inventory, permanent plots were classified into six land use/cover categories. Additionally, matrixes for assessing the changes in age class and dominant tree species can provide more detailed information. For forest stand variables(tree density, basal area, growing stock, mean diameter at breath height, and mean height), their growth and change were assessed. The periodic annual growth ratios for tree density and basal area were slightly declined whereas that of growing stock was estimated to be about 3.7%. The uncertainty of changes in forest stand variables is less than 5%, except for tree density (RSE: 58%). The variation of tree density is relatively high compared to the other variables.

• Journal of Cadastre & Land InformatiX
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• v.46 no.2
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• pp.27-42
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• 2016

Forest accounts for almost 64 percents of total land cover in South Korea. For inventorying, monitoring, and managing such large area of forest, application of remote sensing and geographic information system (RS/GIS) technology is essential. On the basis of spectral characteristics of satellite imagery, forest cover and tree species can be classified, and forest cover map can be prepared. Using three dimensional data of LiDAR(Light Detection and Ranging), tree location and tree height can be measured, and biomass and carbon stocks can be also estimated. In addition, many indices can be extracted using reflection characteristics of land cover. For example, the level of vegetation vitality and forest degradation can be analyzed with VI (vegetation Index) and TGSI (Top Grain Soil Index), respectively. Also, pine wilt disease and o ak w ilt d isease c an b e e arly detected and controled through understanding of change in vegetation indices. RS and GIS take an important role in assessing carbon storage in climate change related projects such as A/R CDM, REDD+ as well. In the field of climate change adaptation, impact and vulnerability can be spatio-temporally assessed for national and local level with the help of spatio-temporal data of GIS. Forest growth, tree mortality, land slide, forest fire can be spatio-temporally estimated using the models in which spatio-temporal data of GIS are added as influence variables.

• Journal of Forest and Environmental Science
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• v.28 no.3
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• pp.179-184
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• 2012

Dipterocarps (Dipterocarpaceae) is a dominant tree family of tropical rainforest in Southeast Asia. Dipterocarps have been exploited for its timber and disappearing fast in East Kalimantan. In this study, we predicted the distribution of dipterocarpus, one of the main dipterocarps genera, by evaluating its habitat suitability using logistic regression analysis with specimen collection points and environmental factors from GIS data. Current distribution of dipterocarpus was generated by combining the habitat suitability classes with an updated forest cover map. Rainfall, soil type, followed by elevation was the main factors that influence the distribution of dipterocarpus in East Kalimantan. Dipterocarpus can be found in a quarter of the current forest cover, which is highly suitable as habitat of Dipterocarpus.

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.57 no.5
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• pp.321-332
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• 2024

Understanding the status of surface cover in riparian zones is essential for river management and flood disaster prevention. Traditional survey methods rely on expert interpretation of vegetation through vegetation mapping or indices. However, these methods are limited by their ability to accurately reflect dynamically changing river environments. Against this backdrop, this study utilized satellite imagery to apply the Random Forest method to assess the distribution of vegetation in rivers over multiple years, focusing on the Naeseong Stream as a case study. Remote sensing data from Sentinel-2 imagery were combined with ground truth data from the Naeseong Stream surface cover in 2016. The Random Forest machine learning algorithm was used to extract and train 1,000 samples per surface cover from ten predetermined sampling areas, followed by validation. A sensitivity analysis, annual surface cover analysis, and accuracy assessment were conducted to evaluate their applicability. The results showed an accuracy of 85.1% based on the validation data. Sensitivity analysis indicated the highest efficiency in 30 trees, 800 samples, and the downstream river section. Surface cover analysis accurately reflects the actual river environment. The accuracy analysis identified 14.9% boundary and internal errors, with high accuracy observed in six categories, excluding scattered and herbaceous vegetation. Although this study focused on a single river, applying the surface cover classification method to multiple rivers is necessary to obtain more accurate and comprehensive data.

• Journal of Forest and Environmental Science
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• v.28 no.3
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• pp.152-157
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• 2012

Sarawak is the largest state in Malaysia that covers 37.5% of the total land area. Multitemporal satellite images of Landsat and SPOT were used to examine deforestation and forest fragmentation in Sarawak between 1990 and 2009. Supervised classification with maximum likelihood classifier was used to classify the land cover types in Sarawak. The overall accuracies of all classifications were more than 80%. Our results showed that forests were reduced at 0.62% annually during the two decades. The peat swamp forest suffered a tremendous loss of almost 50% between 1990 and 2009 especially at coastal divisions due to intensified oil palm plantation development. Fragmentation analysis revealed the loss of about 65% of the core area of intact forest during the change period. The core area of peat swamp forest had almost completely disappeared during the two decades.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Environmental Restoration Technology
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• v.9 no.6
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• pp.107-116
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• 2006

Recently, it has been important not only to evaluate environmental effects but also to assess cumulative and comprehensive effects by the development projects. This paper concentrates on temporal and spatial cumulative impacts on Suji district in Yongin, Gyunggi-do. This paper adopted two methods to assess the cumulative impacts. First, it assesses the temporal change of forest patch size and land cover according to the patch size. Second, it compares housing development zones with the neighborhood. The result of the research appears that the damage is very serious, especially in small forest. The Forest area is changed to farm land, most of them become to built-up area later. In addition, it is assessed that the secondary housing development projects did more harm than the initial one. By assessing the cumulative impacts on Suji district, this research suggests to minimize two kinds of solutions : comprehensive environmental assessments in regional unit and regulation on total forest quantity.

• Journal of Forest and Environmental Science
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.49-55
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• 2009

The present study analyses the effect of land use on the vegetation of some desert ecosystems in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (UAE). Three sites were selected to represent different types of land use, inside Umm Al-Banadeq forest, outside the forest and along Abu Dhabi-Al Ain Trucks Road. In total, fifty-two stands were examined; including a matrix of 14 species ${\times}$ 52 stands. Based on species cover data, stands were classified using TWINSPAN and ordinated using DCA. Four vegetation groups were generated at level three of classification. Zygophyllum mandavillei was dominant in most vegetation groups; Heliotropium bacciferum dominated vegetation groups inhabited the forest. Species richness, species turnover, relative evenness and relative concentration of dominance of forest vegetation groups were 2.8, 5.7, 0.7, and 2.0, respectively. The differences were attributed to both natural variability and forestry-induced changes, including change in land use, drainage and ploughing and shading by trees. Vegetation group inhabited Abu Dhabi-Al Ain Trucks Road, that were dominated by Haloxylon salicornicum and Zygophyllum mandavillei have high total cover (8.8 m per $m^{-1}$). Most community and vegetation attributes were significantly higher inside the forest than outside. Human interventions and environmental factors affected species diversity and abundance of these communities.