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There is little available information on lichen diversity and air quality in forests in South Korea. To address this, the present study aims to correlate corticolous lichen diversity with air quality in selected forests in South Korea. Two sites located on Jeju Island and one site located at Mt. Hambaek, Kangwon Province were selected for this study. Twenty trees representing two species (Quercus sp. and Pinus japonica) were chosen at each site. The coverage and frequency of corticolous lichens found on the selected trees were recorded by using 2500 cm 2 grids. Ambient SO 2 , NO 2 , and O 3 levels at each site were determined using Ogawa TM passive samplers having filter pads coated with absorbing reagents. Lichen diversity data collected on selected trees were used to formulate the index of atmospheric purity (IAP). A total of 65 lichen species were found. A negative correlation was observed between lichen diversity expressed as IAP and the concentrations of SO 2 , NO 2 , and O 3 levels. The results revealed that corticolous lichens could be used as indicators to monitor the air quality of forests in South Korea on a large scale.

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Background: Disturbance is one of the main causes for determining diversity of natural communities. A 3-year (2003 to 2005) monitoring of ant communities at a Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) site in South Korea revealed a drop of ant diversity due to a forest disturbance which was evidenced by decrease of leaf area index (LAI) associated with the dropping of tree branches. In order to determine the process of the decrease in diversity, we compared the annual change of functional ant guilds, which are composed of forest ground foragers (FGF), forest vegetation foragers (FVF), soil and litter dwellers (SLD), and open-land foragers (OF). Results: Four functional guilds of ants responded differently to the forest disturbance; FGF and SLD decreased, but OF and FVF increased. Species richness decreased, due to the decrease in SLD, and species evenness decreased mainly due to a sudden increase in an OF species, Formica japonica. Based on these findings, a mechanism is proposed for the decrease in ant diversity after the forest disturbance.