Amphibian species are highly vulnerable to climate change with significant species decline and extinction predicted worldwide. However, there are very limited studies on amphibians in South Korea. Here, we assessed the potential impacts of climate change on different habitat groups (wetland amphibians, Group 1; migrating amphibians, Group 2; and forest-dwelling amphibians, Group 3) under future climate change and land cover change in South Korea using a maximum entropy modelling approach. Our study revealed that all amphibians would suffer substantial loss of suitable habitats in the future, except Lithobates catesbeianus, Kaloula borealis, and Karsenia koreana. Similarly, species richness for Groups 2 and 3 will decline by 2030, 2050, and 2080. Currently, amphibian species are widely distributed across the country; however, in future, suitable habitats for amphibians would be concentrated along the Baekdudaegan Mountain Range and the southeastern region. Among the three groups, Group 3 amphibians are predicted to be the most vulnerable to climate change; therefore, immediate conservation action is needed to protect them. We expect this study could provide crucial baseline information required for the government to design climate change mitigation strategies for indigenous amphibians.
Globally, changes in the climate and in land cover are the most prominent factors affecting the distribution of flora and fauna, including butterflies. Therefore, this study was designed to assess the impact of climate and land cover changes on the potential habitat of the endangered butterfly Leptalina unicolor and its principal host, Miscanthus sinensis, in South Korea. We developed a species distribution model using the maximum entropy modeling approach and evaluated the current and future potential distributions of both species. Currently, the potential habitat of L. unicolor is predicted to be located along the Baekdudaegan mountain range and some isolated patches of its western and southern regions, covering an area of approximately 16,865 km2. However, due to future climate change, its potential habitat would decrease on a large scale (by up to 80.39%), thus limiting its existence to the northeastern region. On the other hand, the host plant (M. sinensis) was estimated to live in all parts of the country under both current and future climate conditions, covering up to 50.45% of the country. Our results showed that future climate and land cover changes will critically reduce the habitat of L. unicolor and limit its existence to relatively cold areas. This study suggests that, in addition to the host habitat, climate and land cover changes also play important roles in the future distribution of L. unicolor. This study predicted the current and future potential habitats of L. unicolor and M. sinensis to help develop management policies for the conservation of this endangered butterfly in South Korea.
Environmental crisis challenges the human race harder than ever before. Ecologists have produced a massive amount of data to cope with the crisis. Accordingly, many national scale ecological database systems have been developed worldwide to manage and analyze these datasets. However, in Korea, ecological datasets produced by different research institutes for different purposes have not been integrated or serviced due to the lack of a well-designed information infrastructure. To address this obstacle, we present EcoBank (www.nie-ecobank.kr), an open, web-based ecological database platform designed to play an important role in ecosystem analysis not only in Korea but also worldwide. The architecture of EcoBank comprises core technologies of WebGIS, Application Programming Interface (API), responsive web, and open-source software (OSS). Huge ecological datasets from 3 different sources, including the National Institute of Ecology (NIE) in Korea, related domestic and international platforms and repositories, pass through the three conceptual modules in EcoBank: data management, analysis, and service. Diverse potential stakeholders of EcoBank can be classified into three groups: researchers, policymakers, and public users. EcoBank aims to expand its horizons through mutual communication between these stakeholders. We opened and launched EcoBank service from December 2019, and now began to broaden its network by linking to other data platforms and repositories over the globe to find possible solutions to ecological issues in Korea.
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