• Journal of Wetlands Research
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.523-532
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• 2017

Environmental problems in urban spaces tend to result from excessive use of resources faster than the ecosystem can recover itself. In order to address this problem, city or municipal governments tend to devise plans and policies to lead development within their ecological carrying capacity. This study computes ecological capacity of Asan city, Province Chung Nam, South Korea through applying the concept of ecological footprint. This study finds ecological footprint and deficit of Asan city in 2015 were 5.12 and -4.99, respectively. From 2001 to 2015, Asan city experienced not only an 81% increase of ecological footprint, but also a 190% increase of ecological deficit. Such results suggest that Asan city has experienced a steady increase of resource consumption due to population increase and urban growth, indicating that loss of ecological spaces such as green space, farmland, wetland and so on restoring the ecosystem has been accelerated. Therefore, in order to promote sustainable development, Asan city should not only protect green space, farmland, wetland, and so on but also create urban growth plans and policies taking into account its environmental capacity of the city. This study provides suggestions for Asan city to lead urban growth within its environmental capacity by applying ecological deficit.

• Journal of the Korean Association of Geographic Information Studies
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.18-33
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• 2009

The purpose of this study is to analyze the effect that consumption patterns of human affect the ecosystem using analysis of ecological footprint(EF) and assessment of ecosystem service value in Daegu Metropolitan Area. The data for analysis were constructed from statistical yearbook of each city and average of public land price on land category. According to the EF analysis on city, total EF of Goryeong was showed the highest by 3.3052gha in 2007. However, total EF of Daegu was assessed the lowest by 2.0134gha among 8 cities. In the results of ecological deficit, 7 cities except Gunwi were assessed by condition of ecological deficit and had exceeded environmental capacity until 2007. Specially, it was analyzed that Daegu may need additional area more than about 30 times to maintain the present consumption patterns. On the one side, the results of analysis of ecosystem service value in Daegu were assessed that citizens of Daegu have borrowed about 1,078.6 million wons to ecosystem per year and one person.

• Korean Journal of Environment and Ecology
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• v.28 no.6
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• pp.769-778
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• 2014

The rapid urbanization and increase in population due to industrialization have led to the extension of cities and the reduction in naturality as a necessity. Now, it is the biggest threat to virtuous circle of ecosystem. With the expansion of common recognition that this ecological crisis would be accompanied by the crisis of mankind, many countries all around the world are conducting researches to indicate the optimum consumption level of individual as an index in addition to cross-national environmental indicators such as ESI, EPI and SDI, by measuring environmental consumption of state, local government or individual, and comparing each region. Based on this background, this research was carried out to estimate the environmental capacity of 23 local government in Gyeongsangbuk-do. The result of EF estimation showed that EF value necessary for life per head in Gyeongsangbuk-do was 0.9534, and it showed an ecological deficit of 25.3 percent when analyzing it in consideration of the ecological capacity. Also, among the local governments in Gyeongsangbuk-do, Youngduk-gun displayed the highest EF, and Ulleung-gun displayed the lowest EF. But when analyzing the ecological deficit in consideration of the ecological capacity of each region, Gumi-city showed the greatest ecological deficit, and Youngyang-gun showed the biggest ecological capacity. The environmental capacity estimated in this study is to digitize the ecological capacity and ecological deficit of each local government in Gyeongsangbuk-do. The estimated optimum environmental capacity of each local government suggests the scale of environmental preservation and proper development and furthermore, could be used as fundamental data for persuading members of each local government when selecting a location of development facility or preservation area.

• Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.56-72
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• 2018

North Korea has been in ecologically deficit state since 1966, despite of lack of energy and food resources. Trends of the Biocapacity (BC), the Ecological Footprint (EF), and the Ecological Deficit (ED) of North Korea were shown and five factors influencing on the Overshoot Rate (OSR) which is the ratio of the BC and the EF in North Korea was analyzed in this study. The five factors consist of two factors affecting to the EF and three factors affecting to the BC in North Korea. Two of the five factors are affecting to the EF those are population, the EF per capita (EFPC) which indicates the individual environmental consumption intensity, and three are affecting to the BC those are the land area, the yield factor, and the value multiplying the equivalence factor and the intertemporal yield factor. The EF has contributed more than the BC to the OSR. From 1966 to mid-1990s, the EFPC was the most contributing factor at about 60%, and after mid-1990s, population at about 40~60%. Contribution ratio of land area and the yield factor have increased after mid-1990s up to 15% and 18%, respectively. The BC of cropland which has decreased due to a decrease in productivity. In order to reduce the ED of North Korea, improvement of productivity of cropland and restoration of forest. Forest area has decreased significantly since 1990 in NK. And ways to solve the food shortage problem which influences on decrease of both productivity of cropland and forest area.

• Journal of Environmental Science International
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.447-456
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• 2016

Access to clean and affordable water is one of the fundamental human rights because water is essential to life and a foundation for socioeconomic development of any country in the world. Despite the efforts to secure water supply in Burundi, the amount of water supplied by public utilities does not meet the demand of the population because population keeps increasing with fluctuation of weather conditions. This study selected north Bujumbura that is a sprawling new residential area in the western part of Burundi as a case to investigate the potential of rainwater harvesting in meeting water demand of the country. Based on a long-term average monthly precipitation in the region, the rainwater harvesting potential was assessed as a function of roof sizes, number of households, and runoff coefficients of roof materials. For the entire region of north Bujumbura, the current water supply capacity of the local water company combined with the rainwater harvesting potential resulted in the water surplus of $468,604.1m^3/yr$. Although three communes among them still showed water deficit in dry season, they still got help from rainwater to relieve their water shortage. This suggests that at the regional scale, proper storages and water quality control for harvestable rainwater could contribute to relieving the regional water shortage and allow the population growth.

• Journal of Ecology and Environment
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• v.36 no.4
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• pp.255-265
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• 2013

This study was conducted to determine the extent of drought resistance based on physiological responses of Calystegia soldanella under water deficit. In order to investigate the changes of plant growth, stomatal density, photosynthesis, chlorophyll fluorescence, the contents of chlorophyll and carotenoid, osmolality, total ion contents, the contents of carbohydrate and proline, C. soldanella was grown under well watered and drought stressed conditions for 12 days. In this study, water-deficit resulted in remarkable growth inhibition of C. soldanella. The effect of water-deficit on plant growth was associated with low osmotic potential of soil. On day 12 after drought treatment, dry weight, relative water contents, number and area of leaves and stem length were lower than those of control. The stomatal conductance and net photosynthetic rate were significantly reduced in water stressed plant to regulate inner water contents and $CO_2$ exchange through the stomatal pore. Chlorophyll fluorescence and chlorophyll contents were not different in comparison with the control, indicating that the efficiency of photosystem II was not affected by drought stress. This results could be explained that water-deficit in C. soldanella limits the photosynthetic rate and reduces the plant's ability to convert energy to biomass. A significant increase in total ion contents and osmolality was observed on day 7 and day 12. Accumulation of proline in leaves is associated with the osmotic adjustment in C. soldanella to soil water-deficit. Consequently, this increase in osmolality in water stressed plant can be a result in the increase of ion contents and proline.

• The Korean Journal of Ecology
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.89-96
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• 1998

The diurnal changes of the stomatal conductance, transpiration and leaf water potential were measured in order to assess the water relations characteristics of Pueraria thunbergiana in August of 1995 and 1996. The results showed two different responses depending on the duration of rainless days. The microclimatic conditions were highly stressful on 2 August. Daily maximum temperature reached to $39.0{\circ}C$ and vapor pressure deficit was 3.55 KPa. During this time the leaf water potential decreased to -1.02 MPa and a marked reduction of stomatal conductance was shown. However, on 15 August the stomatal conductance increased with increment of photon flux density, and transpiration was highly maintained during the day time. Minimum leaf water potential was only -0.47 MPa in spite of high transpiration rate. Furthermore, on 15 August reduced leaf water potential during the day time was recovered rapidly with decrease of photon flux density, whereas recovery of leaf water potential on 2 August was delayed. However, reduced leaf water potential on 2 August was recovered untile the next dawn. Osmotic potential at turgor loss point of Pueraria thunbergiana on 2, 3 and 15 August was -1.79, -1.70 and -1.60 MPa, respectively. The vapor pressure deficit is more contributive to the regulation of stomatal conductance than leaf water potential.

• Journal of Ecology and Environment
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• v.41 no.3
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• pp.99-106
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• 2017

Background: Plants over-expressing Arabidopsis ABF3 (abscisic acid-responsive element-binding factor 3) have enhanced tolerance to various environmental stresses, especially drought. Using terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism (T-RFLP) analysis, we compared the rhizosphere-associated structures of microbial communities for transgenic potato containing this gene and conventional "Jopoong" plants. Results: During a 2-year field experiment, fungal richness, evenness, and diversity varied by year, increasing in 2010 when a moderate water deficit occurred. By contrast, the bacterial richness decreased in 2010 while evenness and diversity were similar in both years. No significant difference was observed in any indices for either sampling time or plant line. Although the composition of the microbial communities (defined as T-RF profiles) changed according to year and sampling time, differences were not significant between the transgenic and control plants. Conclusions: The results in this study suggest that the insertion of ABF3 into potato has no detectable (by current T-RFLP technique) effects on rhizosphere communities, and that any possible influences, if any, can be masked by seasonal or yearly variations.

• Clinical and Experimental Pediatrics
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• v.60 no.11
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• pp.337-343
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• 2017

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is one of the most common psychiatric disorders in childhood. This disorder, in addition to its main symptoms, creates significant difficulties in education, social performance, and personal relationships. Given the importance of rehabilitation for these patients to combat the above issues, the use of virtual reality (VR) technology is helpful. The aim of this study was to highlight the opportunities for VR in the rehabilitation of children with ADHD. This narrative review was conducted by searching for articles in scientific databases and e-Journals, using keywords including VR, children, and ADHD. Various studies have shown that VR capabilities in the rehabilitation of children with ADHD include providing flexibility in accordance with the patients' requirements; removing distractions and creating an effective and safe environment away from real-life dangers; saving time and money; increasing patients' incentives based on their interests; providing suitable tools to perform different behavioral tests and increase ecological validity; facilitating better understanding of individuals' cognitive deficits and improving them; helping therapists with accurate diagnosis, assessment, and rehabilitation; and improving working memory, executive function, and cognitive processes such as attention in these children. Rehabilitation of children with ADHD is based on behavior and physical patterns and is thus suitable for VR interventions. This technology, by simulating and providing a virtual environment for diagnosis, training, monitoring, assessment and treatment, is effective in providing optimal rehabilitation of children with ADHD.

• The Korean Journal of Ecology
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.125-131
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• 1998

Histological damage and growth inhibition of Pinus densiflora were analysed in different areas around the Metropolitan area of Seoul urban (heavily polluted), suburban (lightly polluted), and rural(unpolluted) areas. Soil properties of each area were also investigated. Contact angles of water droplet on needle leaves growing in polluted areas were lower than that in unpolluted area. Transpiration rates of needle leaves growing in polluted areas were more rapid than that in unpolluted area. These results represented that needle leaves growing in polluted areas were more susceptible to water deficit than that growing in unpolluted area was. Growths of annual ring of Pinus densiflora growing in polluted areas were lower than that in unpolluted area. On the other hand, soil pH in polluted areas was lower than that in unpolluted area. That is, the former was more acidified than that the latter was. Ca and Mg contents in polluted areas were lower than that in unpolluted area, while Al contents in polluted areas were higher than that in unpolluted area. These soil properties revealed that the effects of acid precipitates in urban and suburban areas were severer than that in rural area.