ABSTRACT*

Due to Korea’s rapid economic growth, forest landscapes along the urban/rural interface are increasingly under threat of urban sprawl and other unplanned development. Particularly, the patterns and trajectories of the cumulative changes cause forest fragmentations and permanent loss of forestland in the region as well as habitat quality and thus biological diversity. These cumulated negative impacts are ultimately threatening our sustainability in life. Therefore, the primary mission has been to reduce global forest fragmentation, restore forests/ecosystem to healthy conditions, and provide the optimal ecological benefits possible.

According to the Management of Mountainous Districts Act, Ecosystem management and the related field of landscape ecology required “Forestland Primary Assessment System” since 2011 in order to look at a variety of spatial scales of developments in the field of landscape ecology, and to regulate any kind of indiscriminate development processes. Forestland Primary Assessment System advises to get the forest inspected by an expert when proceeding the restoration of forest land use conversion or temporary use of forest land. In regards to the enforcement of Forestland Primary Assessment System, Korea Forest Research Institute emphasized on the importance of habitat space, the natural forest vegetation and animals, wild habitats conservation, and most importantly, terrestrial biodiversity. Korea Forest Research Institute has proceeded a standard reference research including “wildlife habitats fragmentation” (2011) in the assessment components to determine the condition of forestlands. Despite the fact that it is crucial for Forestland Primary Assessment System to attain an inquiry regarding environmental factors such as “wildlife habitats fragmentation/landscape metric transformation” that include “biodiversity” and “fragmentation” factors, current Forestland Primary Assessment System only concentrates on general evaluation components such as trees accumulation, altitude/longitude of landscapes, natural and aesthetic values of the forest, and natural disaster management (Management of Mountainous Districts Act, enforcement Item 20, Clause 3).

The general purpose of this study was to analyze impacts of the forest fragmentation caused by development project, examine the applicability of landscape indicator through Forestland Primary Assessment System, and compare before and after impacts of areal and linear development. Through this process, the ultimate intention is to capture the impacts of forest fragmentation and its significance, and bring up the question of the current Forestland Primary Assessment System and its necessary improvement which we must consider.

Specifically, this study aims for the significant impacts of development industry on surrounding forest ecosystem. In order to analyze the environmental consequences on forest landscape fragmentation caused by golf course development and road construction, we employed FRAGSTATS model, the program for analyzing fragmentation. To conduct a quantitative analysis study of fragmentation due to development industry actions, we applied landscape index such as LPI (Largest Patch Index), NP (Number of Patches), LSI (Landscape Shape Index), PD (Patch Density), CPLAND (Percentage of Landscape), and TCA (Total Core Area) that are relevant to the core area.

As the results of golf course development’s impact analysis, AREA (patch area) decreased while the number of patches increased as well as LSI (Landscape Shape Index) that presents patch density and complexity. In the core region, patch area decreased as a big forest patch got divided into different patches. After examining landscape ecological impacts of road construction, areal development project showed not much different appearance as before. However, landscape index outcomes displayed that there was a prominent gap between before and after impacts specifically including patch area, and number of patches indexes.

Findings suggested that since development industry actions has occurred; landscape ecological integrity has declined while biodiversity loss in terrestrial ecosystems increased. Also, the appearance change of both areal and linear development roughly stayed equal, although linear development project’s before and after landscape index differed by its numbers. This particular result of increase in linear development proved that linear development projects caused more fragmentations than areal development projects. Moreover, linear development projects have a tendency of passing through places such as forests, swamps, and rivers, which could possibly disrupt human life condition unlike areal development projects, and cause significant negative impacts on natural environment. Nevertheless, it would be possible to collect an objective and accurate impact analysis of forest structure and its fragmentations by using LPI, NP, LSI, PD, CPLAND, and TCA indexes. Besides forest patch fragmentations, it appeared that if we could conduct research studies that include variety of plant and animal species, and improve on fragmentations analysis regarding landscape metric, the possibility of accurately implementing Forestland Primary Assessment System would considerably increase.

All in all, the analysis of fragmentations caused by development industry actions directly displayed biodiversity losses in ecosystem such as the decrease of forest area and connection function, and the creation of edges. We must expand efforts to define and develop protocols for sustainable forest management, Forestland Primary Assessment System, and take account of future consequences in order to minimize harmful impacts and fragmentations due to excessive development industry actions, and finally enhance a healthy terrestrial biodiversity.