Abstract
An impervious cover is one of most important factors which effect on a water body environment in a watershed. There are many researches on the impact of an impervious cover on water quality, quantity and ecosystem and most of these researches have been focused on an impervious rate or area in a watershed without considering structure features as like shape, edge, connection of impervious cover. In this study, we focused on a landscape structure which includes shape, density, contiguity, distance, aggregation of land cover type as well as area and rate. The calculation of a landscape indices made to analyse a landscape structure is conducted by applying Fragastats 3.3 program. Osan-cheon watershed where has rapidly urbanized is selected as a study field. Land information for 2002 and 2007 is from land classification maps provided by Ministry of Environment. The result shows that the increasing rate of an impervious cover is more conspicious in Kiheung dam watershed but the fragment of impervious cover areas is shown remarkably in the Osan sub-watershed. The trend of aggregation and connection of impervious covers is increasing. But it was very difficult to say that which type of landscape structure is more beneficial for a watershed management. The implication of this study is to find the need to come over the conventional ways to evaluate landscape structure of a watershed such as rates and areas of impervious cover, and define the importance of landscape feature as like connection, distance, edge density, fragment of impervious covers.