Morphological analysis of green infrastructure in the Seoul metropolitan area, South Korea

The purpose of this study is to understand changes in green infrastructure (GI) in the Seoul metropolitan area, South Korea, focusing on the critical GI components of hubs and links. We applied a morphological analysis tool, morphological spatial pattern analysis (MSPA), to explore GI in the Seoul metropolitan area. For input data to run MSPA, we used 30-m pixel-sized land cover data of 2000 and 2009 provided by the Ministry of Environment of Korea. Land cover data are used as foundational information for GI network mapping. Using MSPA, we examined morphological changes in hubs and links from 2000 to 2009 in the metropolitan area as well as in 32 municipalities in Gyeonggi-do, a major part of the metropolitan area. Our analysis showed that the area of hubs in the Seoul metropolis has decreased, while the number of links has dramatically increased, over this 10-year period. This implies that hubs have largely been fragmented into smaller ones with a rapid increase in links in a way that does not conserve and enhance GI. We also compared analysis of network area changes in the Seoul metropolitan area with the environmental conservation value assessment map (ECVAM) currently in use by the government to assess conservation value, and found that the network areas of 2009 mapped by MSPA corresponded to a 87.8 % level to the Grade I areas of the ECVAM, with variation by municipality. From these analyses, we conclude that MSPA is helpful in establishing conservation planning strategies optimized for local and regional contexts. The MSPA also provides a useful tool to complement the ECVAM for improving GI functions.