In this study, 46 reservoirs in South Korea were characterized based on heavy metal concentration in sediments. We analyzed the relationship between heavy metal concentrations, physicochemical water quality and hydromorphological factors in each reservoir. Study reservoirs were classified into five groups of reservoirs, by hierarchical cluster analysis based on the similarities of heavy metal concentration. Group 1 had the most severe sediment heavy metal contamination among the groups, whereas Groups 2 and 3 showed low levels of heavy metal contamination. Group 4 displayed high value of Ni, and Group 5 showed high contamination of Pb, Cu, Cr, Ni, and Hg. Groups 1 and 5, which had high concentration of heavy metals in sediments, showed a high density of mines in the catchment of reservoirs. Heavy metal concentration was high in reservoirs with large capacity or the ones located at higher elevation, and also highly related with number of mines in the catchment of reservoir. This study can contribute to the systematic management of sediment heavy metals in reservoirs.

Pine wilt disease (PWD) is one of the hazardous pine tree diseases in whole world. In Korea, PWD has been spreading since it was first observed in Busan in 1988. Dispersion of PWD is mainly mediated by its vectors such as Japanese pine sawyer. In this study, we characterized environmental condition including meteorological factors, geographical factors, and land use factors influencing on the occurrence of PWD. The occurrence data of PWD were collected at 153 sites where were the initial occurrence sites of PWD in local government regions such as city, Gun, or Gu scale. We used Akaike Information Criterion (AIC) to evaluate the relative importance of environmental variables on the discrimination of occurrence or absence of PWD. The results showed that altitude, slope, and distance to road were the most influential factors on the occurrence of PWD, followed by distance to building. Finally, our study presented that human activities highly influenced on the long term dispersal of PWD.