• Korean Journal of Ecology and Environment
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• v.46 no.3
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• pp.449-459
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• 2013

Forest vegetation of Geochilbong (1,177 m) in Deogyusan National Park is classified into mountain forest vegetation and flatland forest vegetation. Mountain forest vegetation is subdivided into deciduous broad-leaved forest, valley forest, coniferous forest, afforestation and etc., while riparian forest was found under the category of flatland forest vegetation. Including 89 communities of mountain forest vegetation and 4 communities of other vegetation, the total of 93 communities were researched; the distributed colonies classified by physiognomy classification are 32 communities deciduous broadleaved forest, 21 communities of valley forest, 12 communities of coniferous forests, 24 afforestation and 4 other communities. As for the distribution rate for surveyed main communities, Quercus mongolica, Quercus serrata, Quercus variabilis communities account for 56.54 percent of deciduous broad-leaved forest, Fraxinus mandshurica, Cornus controversa community takes up 46.58 percent of mountain valley forest, Pinus densiflora community holds 74.98 percent of mountain coniferous forest holds. In conclusion, minority species consisting of Quercus mongolica, Quercus serrata, Quercus variabilis, Fraxinus mandshurica, Cornus controversa, Pinus densiflora are distributed as dominant species of the uppermost part in a forest vegetation of Geochilbong in Deogyusan National Park. In addition, because of vegetation succession and climate factors, numerous colonies formed by the two species are expected to be replaced by Quercus mongolica, Carpinus laxiflora and Fraxinus mandshurica which are climax species in the area. However, the distribution rate of deciduous broad-leaved forest seems to increase gradually due to global warming and artificial disturbance.

• Korean Journal of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.215-231
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• 2020

Forest landscape models (FLMs) can be used to investigate the complex interactions of various ecological processes and patterns, which makes them useful tools to evaluate how environmental and anthropogenic variables can influence forest ecosystems. However, due to the large spatio-temporal scales in FLMs studies, parameterization and validation can be extremely challenging when applying to new study areas. To address this issue, we focused on the parameterization and application of a spatially explicit forest landscape model, LANDIS-II, to Mt. Gyebang, South Korea, with the use of the National Forest Inventory (NFI) and long-term ecological research (LTER) site data. In this study, we present the followings for the biomass succession extension of LANDIS-II: 1) species-specific and spatial parameters estimation for the biomass succession extension of LANDIS-II, 2) calibration, and 3) application and validation for Mt. Gyebang. For the biomass succession extension, we selected 14 tree species, and parameterized ecoregion map, initial community map, species growth characteristics. We produced ecoregion map using elevation, aspect, and topographic wetness index based on digital elevation model. Initial community map was produced based on NFI and sub-alpine survey data. Tree species growth parameters, such as aboveground net primary production and maximum aboveground biomass, were estimated from PnET-II model based on species physiological factors and environmental variables. Literature data were used to estimate species physiological factors, such as FolN, SLWmax, HalfSat, growing temperature, and shade tolerance. For calibration and validation purposes, we compared species-specific aboveground biomass of model outputs and NFI and sub-alpine survey data and calculated coefficient of determination (R²) and root mean square error (RMSE). The final model performed very well, with 0. 98 R² and 8. 9 RMSE. This study can serve as a foundation for the use of FLMs to other applications such as comparing alternative forest management scenarios and natural disturbance effects.

• Journal of the Korean Association of Geographic Information Studies
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.22-34
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• 2004

An artificial disturbance like fragmentation in watershed forest has impacted a sustainability of watershed ecosystem, therefore this research quantified the landscape structure in the Geumho river watershed using landscape indices and GIS. Landscape indices were calculated from the forest distributed maps for 24 subwatersheds. Three common factors, which explained about 85% of the variation in the original data, were extracted by a factor analysis. The fragmentation gradient in forest landscape, which was calculated from the factor scores, was correlated with proportion of urban land (r=0.827, p<0.01, $R^2$=0.685), elevation (r=-0.637, p<0.01) and slope gradient (r=-0.593, p<0.01). The result of the study presented that the methodology and the values of landscape indices to assess the structural patterns of forest landscape for the Geumho river watershed management. Future research will be directed towards the detection of impacts of landscape patterns and their changes on the integrity of watershed environments.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Landscape Architecture
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• v.45 no.3
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• pp.30-40
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• 2017

The purpose of this study is to identify the change in vegetation structure of a complementary forest through monitoring a natural complementary village forest. Because the most complementary village forests are located in the Jinan of all counties of South Korea, the naturally-managed Seochon complementary village forest of Jinan county was selected for monitoring the changes. In this study, it was found that Seochon Village, which was formed in the late 1800s as a refuge by Catholic believers, began to evolve and develop other parts of the forest for refugee purposes but that the forest around the stream's mouth remained intact and was conserved. The vegetational survey for monitoring was performed in 2002, 2007 and 2016. In field survey, D(Dominent degree) and S(Sociability degree) were measured by Brown-Blanquet's method. This study monitored the change of species richness and species composition and layer structure through an analysis of the field survey. As a result, it was found that the structure and function of the complementary village forest has been improved through reduced human disturbance. It was also found that a multi-layer structure has been more stable, species richness has been increased, and quality of species composition has been improved through natural succession.

• Journal of Korean Society of Forest Science
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• v.84 no.3
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• pp.333-342
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• 1995

A user - oriented computer model to aid designing forest road is developed to release the burden by increasing efficiency of time - consuming and laborious road design works. In this paper, the structures and functions of the model are discussed. The model consists of functional modules : 1)input module to treat survey data and design criteria ; 2)road design module to generate preliminary road layout, horizontal and vertical curvatures and curve widening ; 3)earthwork analysis module to determine the economic mass movement ; 4)report writer module to produce hard copies of engineering drawings for plan views, cross - sections and profiles, earthwork calculation sheets and mass movement diagrams. In addition, the report writer also provides the information on earthwork disturbance along the cut and - fill slopes. The modules are designed to be fully - integrated to enable the users to perform engineering analyses and evaluate design alternatives in a series of road - design procedures.

• Korean Journal of Environment and Ecology
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.457-464
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• 2003

A valley forest in Sangbuun area at Jirisan National Park was studied to investigate forest structure in relation to altitude and part of the slope. Forty-eight quadrats were set up in the valley forest along altitude of 726m to 1,090m and part of the slope, and vegetation analysis for the woody species in the tree and subtree layers were carried out. With increasing elevation belt, mean DBH, height and basal area of the trees in the tree layer increased while their density decreased. This trends may be caused by the disturbance which was relatively severe in the low elevation area. As elevation increased, the importance percentages of Fraxinus rhynchophylla, Quercus variabilis and Quercus mongolica increased while those of Styyax japonicus, Carpinus laxiflora and Pinus densiflora decreased. The importance percentages of Quercus variabilis and Pinus densiflora increased as going from lower part to upper part of the slope. However, the opposite trend was found for the importance percentages of Acer mono and Corlus heterophylla var. thunbergii. Number of species and species diversity decreased as increasing elevation and going from lower part to upper part of the slope. According to importance percentage and cluster analysis, the valley forest was classified into three forest communities of Quercus serrata-broad-leaved tree species community in lower part of the slope at low elevation belt, middle elevation belt and middle and upper parts of the slope at high elevation belt, Pinus dnsiflora-Quercus serrata community in middle and upper parts at low elevation belt, and Quercus mongolica-broad-leaved tree species community in lower part of the slope at high elevation belt and top area.

• Korean Journal of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.35-44
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• 2015

Forests contain a huge amount of carbon (C) and climate change could affect forest C dynamics. This study was conducted to predict the C dynamics of Pinus densiflora and Quercus variabilis forests, which are the most dominant needleleaf and broadleaf forests in Korea, using the Korean Forest Soil Carbon (KFSC) model under the two climate change scenarios (2012-2100; Constant Temperature (CT) scenario and Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 8.5 scenario). To construct simulation unit, the forest land areas for those two species in the 5th National Forest Inventory (NFI) data were sorted by administrative district and stand age class. The C pools were initialized at 2012, and any disturbance was not considered during the simulation period. Although the forest C stocks of two species generally increased over time, the forest C stocks under the RCP 8.5 scenario were less than those stocks under the CT scenario. The C stocks of P. densiflora forests increased from 260.4 Tg C in 2012 to 395.3 (CT scenario) or 384.1 Tg C (RCP 8.5 scenario) in 2100. For Q. variabilis forests, the C stocks increased from 124.4 Tg C in 2012 to 219.5 (CT scenario) or 204.7 (RCP 8.5 scenario) Tg C in 2100. Compared to 5th NFI data, the initial value of C stocks in dead organic matter C pools seemed valid. Accordingly, the annual C sequestration rates of the two species over the simulation period under the RCP 8.5 scenario (65.8 and $164.2g\;C\;m^{-2}\;yr^{-1}$ for P. densiflora and Q. variabilis) were lower than those values under the CT scenario (71.1 and $193.5g\;C\;m^{-2}\;yr^{-1}$ for P. densiflora and Q. variabilis). We concluded that the C sequestration potential of P. densiflora and Q. variabilis forests could be decreased by climate change. Although there were uncertainties from parameters and model structure, this study could contribute to elucidating the C dynamics of South Korean forests in future.

• Korean Journal of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.198-221
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• 2021

After large-scale reforestation in the 1960s and 1970s, forests in Korea have gradually been aging. Net ecosystem CO₂ exchange of old-growth forests is theoretically near zero; however, it can be a CO₂ sink or source depending on the intervention of disturbance or management. In this study, we report the CO₂ budget dynamics of the Gwangneung deciduous old-growth forest (GDK) in Korea and examined the following two questions: (1) is the preserved GDK indeed CO₂ neutral as theoretically known? and (2) can we explain the dynamics of CO₂ budget by the common mechanisms reported in the literature? To answer, we analyzed the 15-year long CO₂ flux data measured by eddy covariance technique along with other biometeorological data at the KoFlux GDK site from 2006 to 2020. The results showed that (1) GDK switched back-and-forth between sink and source of CO₂ but averaged to be a week CO₂ source (and turning to a moderate CO₂ source for the recent five years) and (2) the interannual variability of solar radiation, growing season length, and leaf area index showed a positive correlation with that of gross primary production (GPP) (R²=0.32~0.45); whereas the interannual variability of both air and surface temperature was not significantly correlated with that of ecosystem respiration (RE). Furthermore, the machine learning-based model trained using the dataset of early monitoring period (first 10 years) failed to reproduce the observed interannual variations of GPP and RE for the recent five years. Biomass data analysis suggests that carbon emissions from coarse woody debris may have contributed partly to the conversion to a moderate CO₂ source. To properly understand and interpret the long-term CO₂ budget dynamics of GDK, new framework of analysis and modeling based on complex systems science is needed. Also, it is important to maintain the flux monitoring and data quality along with the monitoring of coarse woody debris and disturbances.

• Journal of Korean Society of Forest Science
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• v.105 no.4
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• pp.401-413
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• 2016

Forest resources utilization and variable disturbance history have been affected the rarity and conservation value of forest relict trees, which served as habitat for forest biodiversity, important carbon stock and cultural role include human and natural history in South Korea. This study was conducted to establish the baseline data for forest resources conservation by clarifying species diversity, spatial distribution and ecological characteristics (individual and habitat) of forest relict trees (DBH > 300 cm) based on the data getting from mountain trail, high resolution aerial photos and field professionals and field survey. As results, 54 taxa (18 family 32 genus 48 species 1 subspecies 3 variety and 2 form) as about 22% of tree species in Korea was identified in the field. 837 individuals of forest relict trees were observed and the majority of the trees was in Pinaceae, deciduous Fagaceae and Rosaceae, which families are abundant in population diversity. High elevation area was important to relict trees as mean altitudinal distribution was 1,200 m a.s.l as likely affected by human activity gradients and mid-steep slope and North aspect was important environment for the trees remain. Many individuals exhibited 'damage larger branch' (55.6%) and consequent relatively lower mean canopy coverages (below 80%). Synthetically, present diversity and abundance of relict forest trees in South Korea were the result of complex process among climate variation, local weather and biological factors and the trees of big and old were estimated to important forest biodiversity elements. In the future, clarifying the role and function of relict trees in forest ecosystem, in- and ex- situ programmes for important trees and habitat, and activities for building the background of conservation policy such as "Guideline for identifying and measurement of forest relict trees".

• Korean Journal of Environment and Ecology
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.128-137
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• 2008

The purpose of this study is to analyze the effect of hiking trails on forest landscape's fragmentation, based on which also to assess the landscape-ecology-based integrity by small drainage area by selecting Bukhansan National Park as a survey target. The results of effect analysis are as follow; size of forest patch decreased; the density of patch and edge increased; patch shape became complicated; the dimensions of core area noticeably decreased and proximity degree between patch increased after trail-building. In addotion, the assessment results of overall landscape ecology-based integrity by small drainage basin showed that the Bukhansan catchment area was highest making 3.7 point, while Gugi catchment area was rated the lowest making 1.6 point. Putting the above results together, it is necessary to prohibit the opening up of unnecessary trails and to make room for ecological restoration of damaged and disturbance area to their original state as nature goes for landscape-ecology-based conservation and management of forests.