Abstract
Deforestation in North Korea is becoming the epitome of the environmental change occurring in the Korean Peninsula. This study estimates the agro-environmental variables of North Korea’s croplands and analyzes the impact of deforestation using the GEPIC (GIS-based EPIC (Environmental Policy Integrated Climate)) model and time-series land cover maps. To identify the changes in agricultural quality under deforestation, wind erosion, water erosion, organic carbon loss, and runoff were selected as the agro-environmental variables having an impact on cropland stability and productivity. Land cover maps spanning the past three decades showed that 75% of the forests were converted to croplands and that 69% of all converted croplands were originally forests, confirming the significant correlation between deforestation and cropland expansion in North Korea. Despite limitations in the verification data, we conducted qualitative and quantitative validation of the estimated variables and confirmed that our results were reasonable. Over the past 30 years, agro-environmental variables showed no clear time-series changes resulting from climate change, but changes due to spatial differences were seen. Negative changes in organic carbon loss, water erosion, and runoff were observed, regardless of the crop type. On newly-converted agricultural lands, runoff is 1.5 times higher and water-driven erosion and soil organic loss are more than twice as high compared to older croplands. The results showed that the agro-environment affected by deforestation had an impact on cropland stability and productivity.
Highlights
Deforestation in North Korea is garnering attention as being representative of the environmental change occurring in the Korean Peninsula and is causing concern at the international level [1]
This research estimated the representative agro-environmental variables using the GEPIC model to confirm that cropland expansion at the expense of deforestation has had impacts on crop productivity and cropland stability in North Korea
Land cover maps from the 1980s to the 2000s showed that 75% of converted forests became cropland and 69% of converted cropland came from forests
Summary
Deforestation in North Korea is garnering attention as being representative of the environmental change occurring in the Korean Peninsula and is causing concern at the international level [1]. Famine began in North Korea during the period called “The Arduous March” in the 1990s and continues to the present day along with political and economic trajectory During this time, North Korean croplands have been expanding, mostly as a result of deforestation [8]. The EPIC model provides the most effective approach for this research and is applicable to changes in climate and cropland areas This model enables the estimation of more than 50 types of agro-environmental variables, while most other models estimate only a fraction of those variables or only plot-based variables [18,19]. This research aims at identifying the impacts of deforestation through the expansion of croplands in North Korea and how deforestation can influence cropland stability and productivity, using representative agro-environmental variables. This study intends to explore the implications of deforestation on the agricultural sector, by comparing the agro-environmental variables of newly converted croplands through deforestation and existing croplands (existing prior to the 1980s)
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