Human impact on flora and habitats in Korean rural settlements

Land use has direct and indirect effects on the environmental conditions, which play a major role in the dynamics and changes in landscape. In Central Europe, the hemeroby approach is broadly used to quantify human impact on habitats and their vegetation. In this paper, the hemeroby approach was adopted for studying the rural settlements in the East Asian Republic of Korea. Flora and habitats of eight villages were analysed. The habitats were classified according to the five degrees on the hemeroby scale (oligo-, β-meso-, α-meso-, eu-, and polyhemerobic). Hemeroby indicator values were derived for species that were typical of a specific level of hemeroby. Habitats with the same level of hemeroby were grouped. The highest species number was found in habitats that were only moderately influenced by man. This corresponds to the intermediate disturbance hypothesis. The flora of habitats that were subject to the highest level of human impact (polyhemerobic)was characterized by a high proportion of annual species, but unexpectedly not by the highest proportion of non-native species.