Design on Slopes Revegetation and Tentative Instruction on Construction Work

In Korea, there has been no revegetation applicable standard for slopes formed by road construction work up to now, so revegetation work has been done using mostly foreign varieties in the manner of early revegetation. However, foreign varieties have some shortcomings; for example, they tend to be dried to death after construction work. Besides, due to the rift in the supporting soil, these revegetated varieties are often displaced from the slopes. Thus, the Ministry of Construction & Transportation on July, 2005 established revegetation standard on the slopes suited for the natural eco-system of Korea and organized positively recommending directions for using self-sewn plants growing near the slopes in overall consideration of soil, weather, regional conditions. The locations specified in this direction are the slopes at the road construction jobsite like the expressway, highways, and local roads. In addition, the Ministry's standard and directions stipulated that damaged slopes's natural environment and eco-system due to various road construction work should be restored, and thus a feeling of stability and pleasantness should be provided to road users as well. Also, the Ministry tried to select seed plants and revegetation measures suited for surrounding environment to put the environment-friendly slope revegetation measures into practice through the test revegetation work in order to prevent illegal construction practices and to improve the quality of revegetation. According to the direction, revegetation districts aimed at the slopes are divided into three ones in consideration of weather environment, regional environment, and forest environment as follows : national territory's core ecological green-land based district centering on the Taebaek Mountains; coastal ecosystem district including islands off the coast; inland eco-system district. The combination of revegetation plants according to environment revegetation districts, should be executed by dividing into herb-oriented type, woody plant colony type, and bio-species versatility restoration type, and the selection of seeding plants should be done in the presence of a supervisor and through test construction results and technology counseling from a specialist in natural eco-system restoration and revegetation measure seed combination standard according to environment revegetation districts. This direction will be executed in the manner of monitoring until the yea 2008 and 2009 it will be finalized and enforced on December, 2009.