Soil harbours great biodiversity and governs the ecosystem processes such as nutrient cycling and energy flow. Among groups of mesofauna, soil mites; oribatids, gamasids, prostigmatids, astigmatids are hyper-diverse and abundant in soil ecosystem. This renders the use of soil mite assemblage for biological indicator of the ecosystem health. Gamasida are the main predator among the soil mesofauna, playing a crucial role in maintaining the soil food web and contribute significant influence on material cycling and energy flow. Several concepts of environmental assessment using soil mites, specially Oribatid mite and Gamasid mites have been proposed, but not quite applied yet. Examples are the indexes of conventional community analysis, Aoki’s index of oribatid mites and maturity index of gamasid mites, We have collected soil mites from diverse ecosystems; natural forests, disturbed forests, perennial tree orchards, and annul farming fields. Using those data, here we present some of the results on environmental assessment of the habitats.

• Chuleui Jung(Dept. Bioresource Sciences, Graduate School, Andong National University) | 정철의
• Jiwon Kim(Dept. Bioresource Sciences, Graduate School, Andong National University) | 김지원
• Eunsun Keum(Dept. Bioresource Sciences, Graduate School, Andong National University) | 금은선