Mission of KLTER
The objectives for establishing and managing KLTER sites are to provide experimental forest for conducting research to understand the forest ecosystem of Korea, and to serve as sites providing national and international long-term ecological monitoring data for forest ecosystem.
KLTER sites encompass the major forest ecosystem types of Korea.
GEF is a very unique forest ecosystem reserved for more than a couple of hundred years.
GBS belongs to typical secondary forest in mountainous region characterized by rugged and elevated terrain.
SMS is located in warm temperate coastal region.
And, SCK is established in fire disturbed area to monitor and assess the forest recovery after fire.
This site selection secures its value for long-term research, especially forest dynamics and disturbance regimes of forest ecosystem covering 65% of total land area.
Ongoing Researches
- Long-term ecological research under changing global environment Basically, the objective of this study is to understand the structure and function of forest ecosystem by means of long-term monitoring. Besides this study focuses on how forest ecosystem will work under climate change. KLTER sites are suited to manipulative experiments that target learning about ecosystem response to human-induced land management activities and global warming. Research will be continued to gain a better understanding of the physical, chemical, and biological processes at all relevant geographic and time scales.
- Carbon and water cycles of forest ecosystem This research focuses on linking flux footprint, ecohydrologic schemes and satellite images to bridge the gaps between different scales of carbon/water exchange processes in a complex landscape. Scaling logic that incorporates a synergy of various inter-disciplinary researches.