Abstract
The aim of this study was to determine the characteristics of forest wetlands by developing factors for site suitability and applying these factors to 107 sites in South Korea. We developed a forest wetland assessment in a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) environment to assess site suitability. We considered 16 factors including slope, elevation, visibility, land ownership, distance to city, and so on. We conducted an expert survey with experts to analyze the relative importance by using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). We found that the order of importance of the 5 criteria applied in this study was: (1) Natural Ecology, (2) Land Use, (3) Natural Landscape, (4) Tourist Attraction, and (5) Accessibility. We then analyzed the spatial characteristics of each site based on the AHP result and divided the 107 forest wetlands into three categories by cluster analysis. Sites with high scores on the assessment were primarily the landscape ecology or land use criterion. Our differentiation of these forest wetland characteristics could help enable policymakers to develop sustainable management with the aim of balancing conservation with utilization in ecotourism destinations.
Highlights
In a forest wetland, marsh plants grow naturally in forests or marshlands and peatlands connected with forests, providing various public service functions
The Level 3, intensive site assessment, provides a more thorough and rigorous measure of wetland condition by gathering direct and detailed measurements of biological taxa and/or hydrogeomorphic functions. This monitoring and assessment system at each stage is critical for wetland management, we focused on the Level 1 stage, which evaluates the characteristics of land at a landscape level for comparing sites overall
The factors we have developed assessed the conservation value and utilization value of forest wetlands
Summary
In a forest wetland, marsh plants grow naturally in forests or marshlands and peatlands connected with forests, providing various public service functions. Previous studies regarding forest wetlands have dealt with their ecological, social, economic, and recreational functions worldwide [2,3,4,5]. To reduce the decline of plant succession, caused by an absence of landscape management [7,8] and secondly, to enhance their public utilization for social, health, educational, and recreational benefits [9,10,11,12]. Considering the importance and utility of forest wetlands, it is necessary to consider both their ecological and sociocultural characteristics
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