2020, Vol.29, No.1

Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment 2023 KCI Impact Factor : 0.51

pISSN : 1225-7184
https://journal.kci.go.kr/kseia

This study aims to evaluate the effect of artificial facilities constructed after the release of the civilian controlled zone (CCZ) in Cheorwon on the inhabitation of cranes. The study site was released from the CCZ in 2012, and several barns have been built since 2017. The average number of Red-crowned Cranes was 9.3±4.3 individuals (±Standard Deviation) in the period before the release of the CCZ from 2009 to 2012, and it decreased by ca. one third of Red-crowned Crane’s average individuals were showing 3.5±0.5 individuals after release. The average number of White-naped Cranes also appeared to be decreased by ca. 90% from 63.3±24.6 to 6.0±6.0 individuals. This results suggest that the construction of greenhouses and barns after the releasing of the CCZ affected the decrease of the population of these two crane species. In the case of Red-crowned Crane, the core area tended to move away from the area where barns were built. However, the distribution range of Red-crowned Cranes did not change significantly we expected because the study area was not their favorite place since 2012 when the area was released from the CCZ. The density of the White-naped Crane was relatively high even in the area where greenhouses were built, but after 2017 when the barn was built intensively, core habitat of crane became shrink and fragmented. These results suggest that both Red-crowned Cranes and White-naped Cranes response sensitively against habitat change due to the construction of barns. Since the release of the CCZ, the construction of the greenhouse has been influenced on the distribution of cranes, but subsequently, the construction of the barn seems to have caused a bigger change in their core habitat because the passage of people to barns is more frequent than the greenhouses.

Industrialization has increased the production of road-deposited sediments (RDS) and the level of heavy metals in those RDS, which can have a significant impact on the surrounding aquatic environments through non-point pollution. Although the relationship between contamination characteristics and particle size of RDS is important for pollution control, there is very little information on this. In this study, we investigated the characteristics of grain size distribution and heavy metal concentrations in the road-deposited sediments (RDS) collected from 25 stations in Shihwa Industrial Complex. The environmental impact of RDS with particle size is also studied. Igeo, the contamination assessment index of each metal concentration, represents the RDS from Shihwa Industrial Complex are very highly polluted with Cu, Zn, Pb and Sb, and the levels of those metals were 633~3605, 130~1483, 120~1997, 5.5~50 mg/kg, respectively. The concentrations of heavy metals in RDS increased with the decrease in particle size. The particle size fraction below 250 μm was very dominant with mass and contamination loads, 78.6 and 70.4%, respectively. Particles less than 125 μm of RDS were highly contaminated and toxic to benthic organisms in rivers. RDS particles larger than 250 μm and smaller than 250 μm were contaminated by the surrounding industrial facility and vehicle activities, respectively. As a result of this study, the clean-up of fine particles of RDS, smaller than 125-250 μm, is very important for the control and reduction of nonpoint pollution to nearby water in Shihwa Industrial Complex.

This study aimed at investigating present research and knowledge-base on climate change adaptation in ecosystem sector and analyzed the current status of basic information on ecosystem that functions as evidence-base of climate change adaptation to deduce the suggestions for the future development for knowledge and information in biodiversity. In this perspective, a questionary survey titled as “the ecological knowledge-base and information needs for climate change adaptation” with the researchers who were engaged with adaptation studies for biodiversity in the ecosystem related-research institutes including national and 17 regional local governmentsaffiliated agencies in Korea. The results are as follows; current status of utilizing ecological information which supports climate change adaptation strategy, future needs for adaptation knowledge and ecological information, and activation of utilizing ecological information. The majority of respondents (90.7%) replied that the ecological information has high relevance when conducting research on climate change adaptation. However, only half of all respondents (53.2%) agreed with the real viability of current information to the adaptation research. Particularly, urgent priority for researchers was deduced as intensifying knowledge-base and constructing related information on ‘ecosystem change from climate change (productivity, community structure, food chain, phenology, range distribution, and number of individuals) with the overall improvement of information contents and its quality. The respondents emphasized with the necessity of conducting field surveys of local ecosystem and constructing ecosystem inventories, advancing monitoring designs for climate change in ecosystem, and case studies for regional ecosystem changes with the guidance or guidelines for monitoring ecosystem change to enhance the quality of adaptation research and produce related information. In terms of activation for ecological information usage, national and local adaptation network should be working based on the integrated ecological platform necessary to support exchanges of knowledge and information and to expand ecosystem types in time and spatial dimension.