Biodiversity conservation under climate change considering the expansion of protected areas and the increasing occurrence of landslide - Pyoungchang (The host of the 2018 Winter Olympics), South Korea

Background/Question/Methods

Under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), many countries have agreed to secure terrestrial land to be protected as much as 17%. Currently, South Korea only has about 10% of the terrestrial protected areas, and it needs to be expanded in order to meet the international standard. Pyoungchang has a large potential to play an important role in terms of biodiversity conservation. However, this region is facing a risk of development due to the 2018 Winter Olympics. Also, Pyoungchang has been seriously damaged by landslides caused by a typhoon, Ewiniar in 2006. The occurrences of landslides are expected to be increased due to the extreme weather caused by climate change. The objective of this study is to offer a wise land-use planning and development plan for policy maker by considering the expansion of protected area and landslide safety in terms of biodiversity conservation. First, by using MARXAN model, we prioritized spatial areas for the expansion of the protected area considering ecological importance and socioeconomic limitations (land-cost of forest). With MaxEnt model, we found the areas with higher possibility of landslides by using precipitation data form the RCP8.5 climate change scenario, and excluded that area. With these two spatial distribution results, we overlapped them to find out the optimal biodiversity conservation area.

Results/Conclusions

First, by using MARXAN model, we prioritized spatial areas of protected areas to be expanded. Second, with using MaxEnt model, we found out the areas with high possibility of landslide under the climate change scenarios of 2050, 2070, 2090, which provided by Korea Meteorological Administration. Each result implies the importance of the biodiversity conservation by illustrating the additional areas to be protected, and vulnerable areas under the climate change. In conclusion, this approach could be useful to build a strategy to find an optimal area of biodiversity conservation.