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National forest change monitoring system in South Korea: an analysis of forest tree species distribution shifts

Informally Refereed

Abstract

Since 1971, South Korea has implemented national forest inventory (NFI) in pursuance of understanding current state and change trend of national forest resources. NFI1 (1971~1975), NFI2 (1978~1981), NFI3 (1986~1992) and NFI4 (1996~2005) were implemented in order to produce national forest resources statistics. However, since the early 1990s, international conventions and organizations started to require diverse forest information for the sustainable forest management and periodic monitoring of forest resources. Following these requirement, South Korea reformed total national forest inventory system. Starting from NFI5 (2006~2010), national forest resources inventory was implemented on the basis of the new system. These time series NFI data can be used to understand the long-term transition of forest and predict the future of forest condition in national scale.

In this study, two analyses were performed to identify forest distribution change using the long-term NFI data. First, area change and distribution change by forest types (coniferous forest, mixed forest, deciduous forest) were compared using time series forest type maps. Second, density change of Pinus densiflora and Quercus spp. using time series NFI data. As results, coniferous forest were reduced overall, but deciduous forests show evident increasing trend. The change of tree density appeared differently based on the topographic characteristics. While tree density of Pinus densiflora has rapidly decreased in regions with low altitude and gentle slope, tree density of Quercus spp. has sharply increased in regions with high altitude and steep slope. As for the tree density of Pinus densiflora, the northern slope showed more decreasing trend than southern slope. Time series National Forest Inventory data is the most extensive forest survey information in South Korea. We could analyze the long-term changing trend of forest stand based on these data.

Parent Publication

Keywords

national forest inventory, forest change monitoring, distribution shifts

Citation

Kim, Eun-Sook; Kim, Cheol-Min; Lee, Jisun; Yim, Jong-Su. 2015. National forest change monitoring system in South Korea: an analysis of forest tree species distribution shifts. In: Stanton, Sharon M.; Christensen, Glenn A., comps. 2015. Pushing boundaries: new directions in inventory techniques and applications: Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) symposium 2015. 2015 December 8–10; Portland, Oregon. Gen. Tech. Rep. PNW-GTR-931. Portland, OR: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station: 368-372.
https://www.fs.usda.gov/research/treesearch/50432