Abstract

Due to rapid and reckless economic development, natural resources of the national land have been damaged and polluted. Accordingly, the necessity for environment-friendly development has been on the rise and many have made efforts to assess the environmental value of the national land. This study divides the conservation areas by means of using relative elevation, slope, and development of housing land based on environmental evaluation of the national land. The relative elevation is obtained by the difference of altitude at the edge of the forest patch extracted from the land cover classification map based on the ridgeline, and the slope is obtained by environment-oriented land suitability analysis. The development of housing land is classified in accordance with the progress of each project. Twenty-six evaluation criteria are divided into five different grades using the minimal indicator approach and then sub-divided into ten grades by means of using the following two scenarios. The first one uses the weight of input materials while the second one relies on the size of patches that are emphasized in landscape ecology. Consequently, such a study demonstrated the following results. The method relying on the weight of input materials revealed the limitation of emphasizing input materials excessively, whereas the method of considering the size of patches resulted in the division of conservation areas that embody regional characteristics. This study is meaningful in that it classifies the conservation areas by reflecting the regional characteristics and the ecological values of animals and plants.

Keywords

• Conservation area;
• National land environmental assessment;
• Relative elevation;
• Patch;
• landscape ecology