The enterprising evaluation for the Korean National Long-Term Ecological Research (KNLTER) Project for six years (Review)

The Korean National Long-Term Ecological Research (KNLTER) project seeks to predict the effects on Korean ecosystemscaused by stress derived from environmental changes from a national perspective. The objective of this articleabout the KNLTER program, continuously supported by the Ministry of Environment (MOE) since 2004, was to inspectthe general plans and to evaluate the project for the KNLTER program objectively, and to make suggestions about the developmentaldirection of the project. As a result of evaluation on the research site, the numbers of research sites in 2010correspond to 50% of those presented in the basic plan of the KNLTER project. As a result of evaluation on the researchcontents in the terrestrial ecosystem section of the KNLTER project, monitoring of climatic and atmospheric changesusing eco-towers should be conducted over a long-term period. Additionally, the soil respiration part of the study needsto be expanded further in order to better understand soil systems. In the freshwater ecosystem section, we need to establishcommon standard investigation items, which can be used as indicators of the actual freshwater environment,considering that freshwater ecosystem management is closely related to human life. In the coastal ecosystem section,we should intensively analyze the correlation between the collected data accumulated thus far, as well as environmentalchanges including climate change, pollution, etc. For very sensible cases such as topographic changes due to rises insea level, we should generate data applicable to prediction and confrontation for future changes through the continuousaddition of variables and applications of a variety of simulation methods. In the animal ecology section, we shouldevaluate ecosystem changes based on animal phenology by selecting indicator animal species, which can be applied toeach relevant ecosystem: namely, terrestrial, freshwater, and coastal ecosystems. As a result of synthetic evaluation conductedunder the auspices of KNLTER, the stability of study areas is frequently implicated as the most common problem.If private lands are designated as study sites, it is very difficult to maintain them as study sites for a prolonged period.Therefore, it is necessary to designate national and public lands, such as national or provincial parks, as study sites. Effortsthus far conducted toward the construction of an appropriate database and modeling studies remain insufficient.After investigating the phenology of the specific species growing in all research sites, it is necessary to assess and reportthe overal