• Journal of Wetlands Research
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.113-120
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• 2016

We examined whether an artificial levee constructed on prime amphibian habitat influences fragmentation. Four different sites on both sides of a levee in the Civilian Control Zone(CCZ) were probed. Sites 1 and 2 are rice paddies on one side of the levee, and Site 3 is the stream that locates in the same side. All the three sites have water conditions of seasonal variance. On the other side, Site 4 consists of rice paddies with a stable condition of water supply, irrigated through a canal. The research sites were frequented and the frog populations were closely monitored. The investigation identified five species. Pelophylax nigromaculatus was the most frequent (n=295), followed by Hyla japonica (n=220) and Glandirana rugosa (n=124). Three Bufo gargarizans and eight Rana coreana were also found. The amphibians, however, were found to relocate themselves according to water condition to rice paddies or stream only within one side of the levee. Despite having ample sources of water and foods, Site 4 lacked large populations of frogs, even when droughts came. Both the species dominance index and the richness index indicated a more favorable living condition of the one side of the levee (Sites 1 and 2) over the other.

• Parasites, Hosts and Diseases
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• v.50 no.3
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• pp.253-257
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• 2012

Natural habitat fragmentation and reducing habitat quality have resulted in an increased appearance of Japanese macaques, Macaca fuscata (Gray, 1870), in suburban areas in Japan. To investigate the risk of zoonotic infections, a coprological survey of helminth eggs passed by wild Japanese macaques was carried out in 2009 and 2010 in Shiga Prefecture, Japan. Microscopic examination found helminth eggs in high prevalence, and nucleotide sequencing of DNA extracted from the eggs identified Oesophagostomum cf. aculeatum and Trichuris trichiura. A fecal culture also detected infective larvae of Strongyloides fuelleborni. These zoonotic nematodes pose a potential health issue to local people in areas frequented by Japanese macaques.

• Korean Journal of Environment and Ecology
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• v.34 no.2
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• pp.170-178
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• 2020

There are few landscape ecological analyses of Khingan fir (Abies nephrolepis) and other habitats of the sub-alpine zone in South Korea. In this study, we tried to quantitatively interpret and assess the habitat characteristics by analyzing 15 landscape indices according to the differences in tree layer coverage, in the Khingan fir habitat growing naturally in the sub-alpine zone of Seoraksan National Park. It was difficult to identify the tendency of landscape ecology to increase and decrease the tree layer coverage in the study site, which was the entire Khingan fir habitat in Seoraksan National Park. However, the Khingan fir habitat was found to be generally low in coverage, and population density as the tree layer coverage of less than 50 percent accounts for 85 percent of the total habitat. Moreover, the Khingan fir habitat in the 10 to 50 percent range was fragmented into a total of 286 patches, making it relatively less connected to the habitat. The total edge length and edge density, which could determine the edge effect of the main part according to the physical form, were the highest in the habitat of 26 to 50 percent coverage, indicating a relatively high impact from outside than habitats of other coverages. The shape with the tree layer coverage of between 10 and 50 percent was more complex even with patches of the same size, and it is believed that these characteristics make it more susceptible to habitat fragmentation and external confounding. We expect that the results of this study can be useful for time series analysis of spatial expansion or reduction of the Khingan fir habitat in Seoraksan National Park and provide the reference data for the morphological change and movement of patches and the connectivity and break-off between forests.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Environmental Restoration Technology
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.1-14
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• 2021

The Ministry of Environment of Korea has been releasing Asiatic black bears since 2004 at Jirisan National Park. It exceeded the target number of Asiatic black bears in 2018. As of July 2020, in addition to 67 traceable bears, many Asiatic black bears are dispersed outside Jirisan National Park. Jirisan National Park is a very dense place with more than 3 million visitors every year. In this study, the roads and trails through Jirisan National Park were considered to be the main dispersion factors of Asiatic black bears, and the fragmentation analysis was conducted. As of July 2017, the length of roads and trails in Jirisan National Park was 363.4km. Based on this, Jirisan National Park was fragmented into 163 patches. There is only one place that maintains a single area of more than 50㎢ that is suitable for large mammals to inhabit, and 141 places are less than 5㎢. There are 6 patches of 24 to 200㎢ area suitable for living of large mammals including Asiatic black bears, in Jirisan National Park. Compared to the announcement made by the Korea National Park Service in 2014, activities of Asiatic black bears were rare in areas below 5㎢ area and the frequency of activities was high in more than 20㎢ area. This shows that human activities in protected areas such as national parks can directly affect the activities of wild animals, including Asiatic black bears. Therefore, efforts should be made to improve the habitat of Asiatic black bears by reducing the pressure of visiting for Jirisan National Park. In addition, as a result of analyzing the fragmentation of the park's natural conservation zone 107.7km, 45% of the trail of Jirisan National Park, was opened, which is more fragmentation than other use zones. The park nature conservation zone accounts for about 32% of the total area of Jirisan National Park, but the average patch area is only 2.93㎢ and seven large shelters are located. Therefore the Asiatic black bears are negatively affected. This is the result of inconsistent national park use zone setting and actual park management. In overseas countries, research is active on the negative effects of human activity on ecosystems in protected areas. However, there is a lack of research of that in Korea. Thus, that research is required for protection area management in the future.

• Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.21-31
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• 2004

Construction of highway would influence wildlife habitat being fragmented and deteriorated. It is inevitable to observe the death of animals that are killed by vehicles. Nonetheless the cause and status of animal roadkill have not been studied, and this study first attempted to analyze the roadkill in major highway in Korea. We collected 860 individuals of dead animals in Joongang Highway during 1996-2003. Among them Korean hare(Lepus sinensis) was totaled in 165 individuals(19.2%) with the highest figure; Korean racoon dog(Nyctereutes procyonoides) was 146(17.0%); Korean squirrel(Sciurus vulgaris) 56(6.5%); Korean roe deer(Capreolus capreolus) 26(3.0%). Domestic animals was totaled in 232 individuals(27.0%); domestic dog(Canis familiairis) 25, and domestic cat(Catus felis) 207. This study also categorized habitat as mountain-mountain, mountain-plain, mountain-river, plain-plain, plain-river, river-river in each side of the road. Habitat of mountain-plain was the heightest with 296(38.9%) individuals followed by mountain-mountain with 263(34.6%). This indicates that wild animals associated with mountain habitat was most influenced by the construction of roads. This study implied that we should mitigate the roadkill by designing artificial construction such as eco-bridge, fences along the sideway, and boxes under the highway, underdrain structure, etc. The monitoring and cause of habitat fragmentation with GIS approach should be followed to reduce the roadkill.

• Journal of Ecology and Environment
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.191-203
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• 2006

To understand the effect of forest fragmentation on forest-dwelling birds, it is more effective to analyze on the selected specialists than on the whole bird community. We investigated the edge preference of forest-dwelling birds to discriminate habitat specialist species in the interior and on the edge of temperate deciduous forests in central Korea. Point count and line transect census were conducted at Gwangneung forest from February to October. Our result shows that there was no consistent tendency in abundance of birds between in the interior and on the edge because of the different landscape characteristics and the high proportion of habitat generalists. Five habitat specialists in 73 bird species were identified by the differences in both population densities; three forest interior and two forest edge specialists. Asian Stubtail Warblers (Urosphena squameiceps), Pale Thrushes (Turdus pallidus) and Coal Tits (Parus ater) were included in the forest interior group, but Black-billed Magpies (Pica pica) and Black-naped Orioles (Oriolus chinensis) were classified as the forest edge group. We suppose that a selective monitoring on patterns and changes in spatial use of these five habitat specialists is needed to estimate the effects of forest fragmentation in temperate deciduous forests. And, moreover, systematic monitoring methods for field survey should be established based on the point count method and line transect census to ensure the equality of data.

• Korean Journal of Ecology and Environment
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• v.57 no.2
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• pp.75-82
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• 2024

This study examined the spatial morphological patterns of forest habitats and the characteristics of roadkill occurrences in the forests of Mungyeong, Yecheon, Yeongju, Andong, and Bonghwa in Gyeongsangbukdo. It involved building a resistance map between habitats and analyzing connectivity based on the least-cost distance. The analysis of the distance between the forest habitat Cores derived from MSPA and roadkill points showed that roadkill occurrences were concentrated approximately 74.11 m away from the Cores, with most roadkills happening within 360m from the habitats. The connectivity analysis between core habitats larger than 1 km² revealed 141 core habitats and 242 least-cost paths between them. The corridor distance value was found to be highest in Mungyeong city, indicating an urgent need for strategies to enhance habitat connectivity there. This research is expected to serve as foundational data for developing strategies to enhance ecosystem connectivity and restore habitats, by analyzing ecosystem connectivity and roadkill issues due to habitat fragmentation.

• Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.347-356
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• 2010

Forests are being seriously fragmented as a result of land development. Land development with disregard to its subsequent environmental impacts is a primary threat to biodiversity by incurring massive habitat losses and changes in structure and composition of forests. The purpose of this study was to develop the impact assessment model for quantitative distance or degree of disturbance by land developments. This study conducted a survey about structure and composition of forest species to determine degree of impact from land development. The edge effect of forest fragmentation on the number of bird species, population size, and bird diversity was obvious. In particular, the bird diversity sharply declines around the forest edge where intensive land development projects take place. To assess the disturbance of forest species, the factors selected were the bird diversity and the rate of edge species. The impact assessment model about bird diversity was explained by type of forest fragmentation and type of vegetation ($R^2$=0.23, p<0.005). The other model about edge species explained by a distance, type of forest fragmentation, type of vegetation, and width of road ($R^2$=0.34, p<0.001). In order to test the applicability of the model developed in this study, the models was applied to the Samsong housing development in Goyang-si, Gyunggi-do. The impacts of land development on the bird species were reasonably quantified to suggest effective mitigation measure. The impact assessment model developed in this study is useful to assess the magnitude of disturbance of bird species. Particularly, the model could be applied to the current Environmental Impact Assessment practices to predict and quantify the impacts of land developments projects on forest bird species.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Landscape Architecture
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• v.32 no.3
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• pp.18-31
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• 2004

Ecological network can solve the ecological problems such as habitat cutting and fragmentation that are resulted from urbanization. Recently, rooftop biotope construction has been appeared as a usefull method for ecological networking in urban area. The objective of this study is to seek the possibility of rooftop greening introduction as well as to select target species for rooftop greening construction from the urban ecological network point of view. In order to select target species, we monitored two adjacent rooftop greening sites, where we found 22 species of birds and insects and 33 species of plants. We set criteria to select target species through documents research, and gave marks species according to the criteria with the help of specialists. We divided the target species into 5 groups on the basis of the 12 selecting criteria. In those two monitored rooftop greening sites, we did not find any species belong to group A, which is the best target species, but we found species belong to the other groups. Orthetrum albistylum, Sympetrum dawinianum belong to group B, which is the priority target species, 7 species besides Passer montanus, Coccinella axyridis, Agrionidae to group C, which is the possible target species, 6 species besides Atractomorpha lata to group D, which is the potential target species, and the others were found to be inadequate to the target species. We found Orthetrum albistylum, Sympetrum dawi-nianum to be the best appropriate target species in the two sites. According to the result of this study, the method of ecological network construction from the dra-gonfly habitat network point of view through the construction of rooftop habitat is ideal for Orthetrum albistylum, and Sympetrum dawinianum. For successful urban ecological network construction, selection criteria and construction techniqes & methods for rooftop habitat should be developed through future research.

• Journal of Ecology and Environment
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• v.43 no.4
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• pp.454-461
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• 2019

Background: Ikonnikov's whiskered bat (Myotis ikonnikovi) is found throughout the Korean Peninsula, as well as in Kazakhstan, Russia, Mongolia, China, and Japan. It is small-sized and primarily inhabits old-growth forests. The decrease and fragmentation of habitats due to increased human activity may influence the genetic structure of bat populations. This study was designed to elucidate the population genetic structure of M. ikonnikovi using mitochondrial genes (cytochrome oxidase I and cytochrome b). Results: The results showed that M. ikonnikovi populations from Korea have high genetic diversity. Although genetic differentiation was not detected for the COI gene, strong genetic differentiation of the Cytb gene between Mt. Jeombong and Mt. Jiri populations was observed. Moreover, the results indicated that the gene flow of the maternal lineage may be limited. Conclusions: This study is the first to identify the genetic population structure of M. ikonnikovi. We suggest that conservation of local populations is important for sustaining the genetic diversity of the bat, and comprehensive studies on factors causing habitat fragmentation are required.