Abstract
The main purpose of this study was to develop a new method for evaluation of stream naturalness in order to appraise and prescribe for streams effectively in the process of ecological restoration of stream corridors. The results are as follows : 1) For this purpose six factors were selected on considering the spatial axes of stream corridor variation and total 20 descriptors about the physical structure were selected. 2) The calculation of S.N.I. for each segment was consisted of three steps, such as calculation of S.N.I.s of the individual descriptors, averaging all the descriptors's for each factor, and finally averaging the factors's for the Total S.N.I. 3) The evaluation unit was decided to be 100m size. The score system ranging 1~5 was adopted. Weighting parameters of factors were unified with each other. 4) A GIS model was adopted for classification, calculation, querying, analysing, and presenting S.N.I. information. And the format of S.N.I. maps including statistical graphs and other spatial watershed information was designed for the GIS odel. The naturalness of stream corridor was was investigated by the naturalness of habitat, and assessed by the descriptors focused on physical structure, therefore the S.N.I. can manifest prescriptions for restoration of the stream corridor. On the other hand because some evaluation factors such as water quality, water volume, fauna, flora, functions of stream exosystem has been excluded, S.N.I. could have some limits on representing the full aspects of stream naturalness. This evaluation method is hypothetical one, so it would be investigated through iterative applicatons.