생태축 분석을 위한 경관생태학적 방법론 연구

Abstract

Abstract Urbanization and other developments encroach natural green space and fragment ecological habitat significantly. As the economic development requires a land to build house and factory, it is inevitable to clear-cut forest and covert cropland into paved residential area or shopping mall. Because the excessive development itself threatens our own existence, it is required to control the development. To maintain a balance between development and conservation, many countries already adopt Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and start to adopt Prior Environmental Review System (PERS). While EIA is focused on the environmental impact at the individual development project level, PERS is focused on minimizing environmental problem and conserving critical green space at the policy and plan level. Unlike a site-specific conservation at a local scale, the problem of habitat fragmentation aroused from the massive development plan like new urban development should be dealt at a large regional scale. Landscape ecological approach is especially appropriate to deal with the problems of habitat loss and fragmentation at regional/landscape scales. From 1980’s, many researchers have developed various tools to measure landscape composition and configuration of landscape patches. Among many landscape ecological concepts, landscape connectivity is an important concept in ecosystem management to conserve and enhance biodiversity, but it is not easy to define what the landscape connectivity is. In addition to the difficulty to define the landscape connectivity, as landscape ecology itself is relatively new research field in ecology, the concepts and tools of landscape ecology are not applied effectively in PERS/EIA to minimize the effect of land development on ecosystem. Despite of the limited applicability, the landscape ecological evaluation in PERS/EIA would be the most effective way to minimize the negative effect of land development on ecosystem at any scales. For a better landscape ecological evaluation in PERS/EIA, this study reviews the previous studies and defines the concept of landscape connectivity. The case study is the broad-scale forest protection plan of the new urban development and analyzes various pre-existing GIS data to grade forest patches based on various landscape ecological criteria and classifies the patches into three conservation classes: 1) absolutely protected forest, 2) relatively protected forest, and 3) buffering forest. By differentiating the classifying criteria, three different forest conservation plans are suggested and then analyzed the landscape ecological differences, especially landscape connectivity, of the alternatives of the forest conservation plan. The landscape ecological connectivity of forest patches is analyzed by using FRAGSTATS and USGS Digital Vision’s Connectivity and Fragmentation AML scripts. The results of the case study show clear differences among three alternatives in landscape connectivity and fragmentation and the problem of FRAGSTATS in comparing the alternatives with different patch numbers. This study suggests the feasibility of the application of landscape ecological methodology to evaluate the alternatives of the spatial land use planning for PERS/EIA with very limited pre-existing GIS data. With more accurate field data, the methodology and result can be further defined and assessed accurately. Although the result of this study is limited and less applicable in practice at this point, this study clearly shows the applicability of the landscape ecological concepts in PERS/EIA evaluation process. Further studies should be followed to consider more landscape ecological indices, the connectivity between forest patches and watershed streamlines, and the importance of individual forest patch in regional landscape connectivity.