• Korean journal of applied entomology
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• v.59 no.4
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• pp.433-441
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• 2020

This study was conducted to understand the distribution characteristics of aquatic insects in ecologically different ponds in terms of the disruption. We investigated the fauna of aquatic insects in three artificial ponds (pond 1, 2 and 3) and two natural ponds (pond 4 and 5) located within 1 km each other around Gungdaeoreum in Jeju Island, from March 2018 to June 2020. A total of 50 species belonging to 15 families were found in the surveyed ponds: total 850 individuals with 14 species in 4 families of the order Odonata, total 4,391 individuals with 14 species in 6 families of the order Hemiptera, and total 2,014 individuals with 22 species in 4 families of the order Coleoptera. In overall, total abundance and species numbers were relatively higher than those of artificial pond in natural ponds in which animal and plant ecosystems were well established. In the case of artificial ponds, the number of individuals and species recovered rapidly when reconstituted by introducing aquatic plants, etc. (Pond 1). The nymphs of Odonata were observed largely in ponds without natural enemies such as large fish, and where adults could freely access without interception by artificial structure. Phytophagous Corixidae of the order Hemiptera were abundant, and Haliplidae populations of the order Coleoptera were affected by the distribution of the plants. Accordingly, the major factors affecting aquatic insect abundance were identified as the presence of refuges such as the topography and aquatic plants and presence of predators. Species of the order, Odonata were vulnerable based on these factors. Our results can be useful as basic information for the restoration of wetlands and construction of artificial wetlands or for conservation of species diversity in the future.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Environmental Restoration Technology
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• v.26 no.5
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• pp.1-18
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• 2023

The Ecosystem Conservation Levy (formerly known as the Ecosystem Conservation Cooperation Fund) system has been in place for 20 years, and it can be said that it has now entered the settlement stage. Based on an analysis of publicly available project implementation data from 2014 to 2020, we found that: 1) As the number of return projects increases, the targets of restoration technologies are also strengthening, and it is necessary to frame a series of processes from application, creation, and monitoring for some detailed projects to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of utilizing the levy. 2) Most of the implemented projects are applied as micro-ecosystem creation, but there are many cases where the contents of the project can be seen as other project categories. This shows that the purpose of the return project needs to be approached more clearly and suggests that institutional complementation is needed from the project application stage. 3) The detailed technologies applied tend to be gradually expanding, but most of them are technologies that are not differentiated from general development projects. It is urgent to secure a more technical identity, such as a range and list of utilized technologies suitable for the characteristics and purposes of return projects. 4) It is necessary to establish a relevant evaluation system or framework to utilize the monitoring results of restoration projects. 5) There have been few cases of application of single restoration technologies since the beginning, but the content and scope of the complexity tend to expand in recent years. Even if the objectives are not comprehensive and diverse, it can be seen that many parts of the projects are oriented toward convergence, so it is necessary to conduct separate research on this. 6) As for the direction of improvement of the return project, it is possible to consider expanding the restoration and conservation focus to partially accommodate the complexity of the natural environment and human ecology. It seems that the expansion of restoration technologies that consider the role and function of humans in the natural environment should be explored.

• Journal of Korean Society of Forest Science
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• v.85 no.1
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• pp.84-95
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• 1996

Environmental pollution has recently been progressed in the metropolitan and industrial areas of Korea and concerns have been evolved against the chronic effects of the pollution on natural ecosystem. This study was carried out to investigate the environmental pollution impacts on ion input into forest ecosystems and soil environmental changes. Study plots were established at Seoul, Ulsan, Yeochon, and Seosan for pollution sites and at Pyungchang for a non-pollution site. Atmospheric deposition was measured with rain, throughfall, and stem flow samples collected in the forest areas. Soil chemical properties were investigated to compare the pollution impacts on the sites. Precipitation acidity in the metropolitan and industrial areas ranged from pH 4.5 to 5.5, showing the levels lower than pH 5.8 of mountain area. Ion concentrations in the precipitation had increased significantly while passing the crown layer in the metropolitan and industrial areas, showing the increase by 4 times at the maximum. Total ion input in the metropolitan and industrial areas was greater than that in mountain area by approximately 2-3 times. Soil acidification caused by acidic ion input seemed to be greatest at Seoul, showing pH 1 decrease compared to that of Pyungchang. Soil canon contents were relatively high in the metropolitan and industrial areas. Although the canon leaching loss was not apparent, soil acidification process seemed to be continued by acidic ion input. Environmental pollution in the metropolitan and industrial areas exerted changes in ion input into the forest ecosystems and soil conditions. The chronic effects of environmental pollution should be monitored and investigated further to explain the processes of ecosystem change and the impacts on plant growth.

• Proceedings of the Korea Water Resources Association Conference
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• 2011.05a
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• pp.8-9
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• 2011

On 4 September 2010 an earthquake of magnitude 7.1 on the Richter scale occurred on the Canterbury Plains in the South Island of New Zealand. The Canterbury Plains are an area of extensive groundwater and spring fed surface water systems. Since the September earthquake there have been several thousand aftershocks (Fig. 1), the largest being a 6.3 magnitude quake which occurred close to the centre of Christchurch on 22February 2011. This second quake caused extensive damage to the city of Christchurch including the deaths of 189 people. Both of these quakes had marked hydrological impacts. Water is a vital natural resource for Canterburywith groundwater being extracted for potable supply and both ground and surface water being used extensively for agricultural and horticultural irrigation.The groundwater is of very high quality so that the city of Christchurch (population approx. 400,000) supplies untreated artesian water to the majority of households and businesses. Both earthquakes caused immediate hydrological effects, the most dramatic of which was the liquefaction of sediments and the release of shallow groundwater containing a fine grey silt-sand material. The liquefaction that occurred fitted within the empirical relationship between distance from epicentre and magnitude of quake described by Montgomery et al. (2003). . It appears that liquefaction resulted in development of discontinuities in confining layers. In some cases these appear to have been maintained by artesian pressure and continuing flow, and the springs are continuing to flow even now. In spring-fed streams there was an increase in flow that lasted for several days and in some cases flows remained high for several months afterwards although this could be linked to a very wet winter prior to the September earthquake. Analysis of the slope of baseflow recession for a spring-fed stream before and after the September earthquake shows no change, indicating no substantial change in the aquifer structure that feeds this stream.A complicating factor for consideration of river flows was that in some places the liquefaction of shallow sediments led to lateral spreading of river banks. The lateral spread lessened the channel cross section so water levels rose although the flow might not have risen accordingly. Groundwater level peaks moved both up and down, depending on the location of wells. Groundwater level changes for the two earthquakes were strongly related to the proximity to the epicentre. The February 2011 earthquake resulted in significantly larger groundwater level changes in eastern Christchurch than occurred in September 2010. In a well of similar distance from both epicentres the two events resulted in a similar sized increase in water level but the slightly slower rate of increase and the markedly slower recession recorded in the February event suggests that the well may have been partially blocked by sediment flowing into the well at depth. The effects of the February earthquake were more localised and in the area to the west of Christchurch it was the earlier earthquake that had greater impact. Many of the recorded responses have been compromised, or complicated, by damage or clogging and further inspections will need to be carried out to allow a more definitive interpretation. Nevertheless, it is reasonable to provisionally conclude that there is no clear evidence of significant change in aquifer pressures or properties. The different response of groundwater to earthquakes across the Canterbury Plains is the subject of a new research project about to start that uses the information to improve groundwater characterisation for the region. Montgomery D.R., Greenberg H.M., Smith D.T. (2003) Stream flow response to the Nisqually earthquake. Earth & Planetary Science Letters 209 19-28.

• Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
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• v.24 no.6
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• pp.607-618
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• 2015

Five years have passed since the first set of environmental samples was taken in 2011 to represent various ecosystems which would help future generations lead back to the past environment. Those samples have been preserved cryogenically in the National Environmental Specimen Bank(NESB) at the National Institute of Environmental Research. Even though there is a strict regulation (SOP, standard operating procedure) that rules over the whole sampling procedure to ensure each sample to represent the sampling area, it has not been put to the test for the validation. The question needs to be answered to clear any doubts on the representativeness and the quality of the samples. In order to address the question and ensure the sampling practice set in the SOP, many steps to the measurement of the sample, that is, from sampling in the field and the chemical analysis in the lab are broken down to evaluate the uncertainty at each level. Of the 8 species currently taken for the cryogenic preservation in the NESB, pine tree samples from two different sites were selected for this study. Duplicate samples were taken from each site according to the sampling protocol followed by the duplicate analyses which were carried out for each discrete sample. The uncertainties were evaluated by Robust ANOVA; two levels of uncertainty, one is the uncertainty from the sampling practice, and the other from the analytical process, were then compiled to give the measurement uncertainty on a measured concentration of the measurand. As a result, it was confirmed that it is the sampling practice not the analytical process that accounts for the most of the measurement uncertainty. Based on the top-down approach for the measurement uncertainty, the efficient way to ensure the representativeness of the sample was to increase the quantity of each discrete sample for the making of a composite sample, than to increase the number of the discrete samples across the site. Furthermore, the cost-effective approach to enhance the confidence level on the measurement can be expected from the efforts to lower the sampling uncertainty, not the analytical uncertainty. To test the representativeness of a composite sample of a sampling area, the variance within the site should be less than the difference from duplicate sampling. For that, a criterion, ${i.e.s^2}_{geochem}$(across the site variance) <${s^2}_{samp}$(variance at the sampling location) was proposed. In light of the criterion, the two representative samples for the two study areas passed the requirement. In contrast, whenever the variance of among the sampling locations (i.e. across the site) is larger than the sampling variance, more sampling increments need to be added within the sampling area until the requirement for the representativeness is achieved.

• Journal of Ecology and Environment
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• v.38 no.4
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• pp.461-476
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• 2015

Global warming has accelerated glacial retreat in the high Arctic. The exposed glacier foreland is an ideal place to study chronosequential changes in ecosystems. Although vegetation succession in the glacier forelands has been studied intensively, little is known about the microbial community structure in these environments. Therefore, this study focused on how glacial retreat influences the bacterial community structure and its relationship with soil properties. This study was conducted in the foreland of the Midtre Lovénbreen glacier in Svalbard (78.9°N). Seven soil samples of different ages were collected and analyzed for moisture content, pH, soil organic carbon and total nitrogen contents, and soil organic matter fractionation. In addition, the structure of the bacterial community was determined via pyrosequencing analysis of 16S rRNA genes. The physical and chemical properties of soil varied significantly along the distance from the glacier; with increasing distance, more amounts of clay and soil organic carbon contents were observed. In addition, Cyanobacteria, Firmicutes, and Actinobacteria were dominant in soil samples taken close to the glacier, whereas Acidobacteria were abundant further away from the glacier. Diversity indices indicated that the bacterial community changed from homogeneous to heterogeneous structure along the glacier chronosequence/distance from the glacier. Although the bacterial community structure differed on basis of the presence or absence of plants, the soil properties varied depending on soil age. These findings suggest that bacterial succession occurs over time in glacier forelands but on a timescale that is different from that of soil development.

• Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.129-138
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• 1999

If rumen bacteria can be manipulated to utilize nutrients (i.e., ammonia and plant cell wall carbohydrates) more completely and efficiently, the need for protein supplementation can be reduced or eliminated and the digestion of fiber in forage or agricultural residue-based diets could be enhanced. However, these approaches require a complete and accurate description of the rumen community, as well as methods for the rapid and accurate detection of microbial density, diversity, phylogeny, and gene expression. Molecular ecology techniques based on small subunit (SSU) rRNA sequences, nucleic acid probes and the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) can potentially provide a complete description of the microbial ecology of the rumen of ruminant animals. The development of these molecular tools will result in greater insights into community structure and activity of gut microbial ecosystems in relation to functional interactions between different bacteria, spatial and temporal relationships between different microorganisms and between microorganisms and reed panicles. Molecular approaches based on SSU rRNA serve to evaluate the presence of specific sequences in the community and provide a link between knowledge obtained from pure cultures and the microbial populations they represent in the rumen. The successful development and application of these methods promises to provide opportunities to link distribution and identity of gastrointestinal microbes in their natural environment with their genetic potential and in situ activities. The use of approaches for assessing pupulation dynamics as well as for assessing community functionality will result in an increased understanding and a complete description of the gastrointestinal communities of production animals fed under different dietary regimes, and lead to new strategies for improving animal growth.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Agricultural Machinery Conference
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• 2017.04a
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• pp.122-122
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• 2017

Recently, environmental problems have become an area of growing interests. In-situ monitoring of water quality is fundamental to most environmental applications. The accurate measurement of nitrate concentrations is fundamental to understanding biogeochemistry in aquatic ecosystems. Several studies have reported that one of the most feasible methods to measure nitrate concentration is the use of Ion Selective-electrodes (ISEs). The ISE application to water monitoring has several advantages, such as direct measurement methodology, high sensitivity, wide measurement range, low cost, and portability. However, the ISE methods may yield inconsistent results where there was a difference in temperature between the calibration and measurement solutions, which is associated with the temperature dependence of ionic activity coefficients in solution. In this study, to investigate the potential of using the combination of a temperature sensor and nitrate ISEs for minimizing the effect of temperature on real-time nitrate sensing in natural water, a prototype of on-site water monitoring system was built, mainly consisting of a sensor chamber, an array of 3 ISEs, an waterproof temperature sensor, an automatic sampling system, and an arduino MCU board. The analog signals of ISEs were obtained using the second-order Sallen-key filter for performing voltage following, differential amplification, and low pass filtering. The performance test of the developed water nitrate sensing system was conducted in a monitoring station of drinking water located in Jeongseon, Kangwon. A temperature compensation method based on two-point normalization was proposed, which incorporated the determination of temperature coefficient values using regression equations relating solution temperature and electrode signal determined in our previous studies.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Environmental Restoration Technology
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.1-12
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• 2017

This study has been carried out for the purpose of predicting the potential habitat sites of invasive alien plants in the DMZ and providing the basic data for decision-making in managing the future DMZ natural environment. From 2007 to 2015, this study collected the data for the advent of Ambrosia trifida var. trifida through fieldwork around the DMZ area, and simulated the potential distribution area of Ambrosia trifida var. trifida using Maxent model among the models of species distributions. As a result, it showed that the potential distribution area of the Ambrosia trifida var. trifida was concentrated in the western DMZ with relatively low altitude and scanty in the central east regions with relatively high elevation and forest cover rate. Because the invasive alien vegetation is a significant threatening factor in the agriculture and restoration of ecology and it costs a lot to restore the area already invaded by invasive alien vegetation, advance precautions are necessary to prevent biological invasions. It is expected that it is possible to predict the disturbed ecosystems through this study for the efficient land use within DMZ in the future and to apply this study in setting up the areas for the development and conservation within the DMZ.

• Journal of Soil and Groundwater Environment
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• v.20 no.6
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• pp.103-110
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• 2015

Nitro-aromatic Compounds (NACs) of explosives are structurally non-degradable materials that have an adverse effect to humans and ecosystems in case of emissions in natural due to the strong toxicity. In this study, batch test in the laboratory-scale has been conducted to find some process parameters of alkaline hydrolysis by considering the characteristics of NACs which are unstable in a base status and field application evaluation have been performed on the batch test results. Based on the experimental results of both laboratory and pilot-scale test, the optimum conditions of parameters for the alkaline hydrolysis of soils contaminated with explosives were pH 12.5, above the solid-liquid ratio 1 : 3, above the room temperature and 30 minute reaction time. In these four process parameters, the most important influencing factor was pH, and the condition of above pH 12.0 was necessary for high contaminated soils (more than 60 mg/kg). In the case of above pH 12.5, the efficiency of alkaline hydrolysis was very high regardless of the concentrations of contaminated soils. At pH 11.5, the removal efficiency of TNT was increased from 76.5% to 97.5% when the temperature in reactor was elevated from room temperature to 80℃. This result shows that it is possible to operate the alkaline hydrolysis at even pH 11.5 due to increased reaction rate depending on temperature adjustment. The results found in above experiments will be able to be used in alkaline hydrolysis for process improvement considering the economy.