Roads are notable and responsible for the loss of biodiversity and disruption of wildlife habitats connectivity. Wildlife crossing structures (WCS) help wildlife move between habitats by connecting fragmented habitats. Their effectiveness is affected by various factors. Here, to identify methods for improving the effectiveness of wildlife crossing structures, we controlled the effect of intrinsic factors, such as size, that are difficult to improve in an already installed area, and then, evaluated the differences in extrinsic factors using 12 landscape characteristics. Our results show that 18 wildlife crossing structures were selected with propensity-score (PS) matching method. The surrounding landscape characteristics differed between high-effectiveness wildlife crossing structures and low-effectiveness wildlife crossing structures. Particularly, there was a significant difference between the ‘statutory protected area’ and the ‘edge’ index of the morphological spatial pattern analysis among the landscape characteristic variables derived within 1 km2 of wildlife crossing structures. We empirically demonstrate that characteristics around highly effective WCS, statutory protected areas are widely distributed, and the ratio of edge of MSPA is low (within 1 km2). Therefore, an important outcome of our research is the demonstration that management of WCS itself is important, but conservation of surrounding habitats and landscape management plans are also significant.

This study aims to investigate the environmental equity of the accessibility to urban neighborhood parks in the city of Daegu. The spatial distribution of urban neighborhood parks was explored by spatial statistics and the spatial accessibility to them was then evaluated by both minimum distance and coverage approaches. Descriptive and inferential statistics such as proximity ratio, Mann Whitney U test, and logistic regression were used for comparing the socioeconomic characteristics over different accessibilities to the neighborhood parks and then testing the distributional inequity hypothesis. The results from the minimum distance method indicated that Dalseo-gu had the best accessibility to the neighborhood parks while Dong-gu had the worst accessibility. It was apparent with the coverage method that Dalseo-gu had the best accessibility whereas Dong-gu and Nam-gu had the worst accessibility to the neighborhood parks at 500m and 1,000m buffer distances. There existed the spatial pattern of environmental inequity in old towns with respect to population density and the percentage of people under the age of 18. The spatial pattern of environmental inequity in new towns was explored on the basis of the percentage of people over the age of 65, the percentage of people below the poverty level, and the percentage of free of charge rental housing. These results were closely related to the development process of urban parks in Daegu stimulated by the quantitative urban park policy, urban development process, and residential location pattern such as permanent rental housing and free of charge rental housing. This study further extends the existing research topics of environmental justice related to the distributional inequity of environmental disamenities and hazards by focusing on environmental amenities such as urban neighborhood parks. The results from this study can be used in making the decisions for urban park management and setting up urban park policy with considering the social geography of Daegu.

This chapter applies the agent-affordance framework introduced in Chapter 2 to the ever-changing information ecosystem in South Korea by identifying changes in key agents and affordances in the country over the past three decades. This is accomplished in the context of co-adapting technological, cultural, political, and legal environments in the country. The chapter provides the background information necessary to explicating the dynamics of information generation and dissemination by and between different agents in South Korea. In particular, it contributes to enhancing understandings of technological, social, political, and legal affordances in South Korea that lay the groundwork for analyses in the subsequent chapters. South Korea’s news media environment, citizens’ use of social media, concerns of misinformation, and issues related to the division of the Korean Peninsula are discussed in the context of agent-affordance interactions. Secondary data analysis is used to document changes in the media environment and ecology in South Korea.