ID: 2258
Presenting Author: Changwan Seo
Session: 653 - Biodiversity Impact Assessment: Information Disclosure, Risk Identification, and Legal Regulation
Status: pending
This study aims to identify the key habitats of endangered species and provide fundamental data to safeguard biodiversity from development pressure in EIA process.
The decline in biodiversity, particularly among endangered species, is accelerating due to indiscriminate development. This study aims to identify the key habitat hotspotsof endangered species and provide fundamental data for their protection from development by integrating this information into the EIA process. The methodology involved first securing the national endangered species list and collecting associated data. Species were categorized by taxonomic group to identify habitat characteristics and select relevant bioclimatic and environmental variables. Subsequently, the Random Forest machine learning algorithm was used to predict and generate habitat distribution maps for each species, and ultimately the overall endangered species hotspot was determined. The key findings indicate that the main habitats for each taxonomic group exhibit distinct spatial distributions based on their habitat characteristics. Notably, plant hotspots showed unique spatial features compared to general plant biodiversity hotspots. Furthermore, the endangered species hotspots were found to be distributed differently from existing protected areas, suggesting their vulnerability to development pressure and highlighting the urgent need for appropriate conservation and management strategies. The results of this study are expected to serve as essential baseline data for protecting the key habitats of highly biodiverse endangered species during the EIA process and for the identification and expansion of new protected areas to achieve the goals of the GBF.
Changwan Seo is a Chief Researcher in the Department of Climate and Ecology at the National Institute of Ecology. His research focuses on modeling and assessing biodiversity and climate change.
Coauthor 1: Man-Seok Shin