Floor litter can reduce the amount of water reaching the soil layer through rainfall interception. The rainfall interception capacity of floor litter varies with the physical features of the litter and rainfall characteristics. This study aimed to define the maximum and minimum interception storages ($C_{mx}, C_{mn}$) of litter layers using rainfall simulation experiments, and examine the effects of litter type and rainfall characteristics on rainfall retention and drainage processes that occur in the litter layer. Different types of needle-leaf and broadleaf litters were used: Abies holophylla, Pinus strobus, Pinus rigida, Quercus acutissima, Quercus variabilis, and Sorbus alnifolia. Our results indicate a wide variation in interception storage values of needle leaf litter, regardless of the rainfall intensity and duration. The A. holophylla needle-leaf litter showed the highest $C_{mx}$ and $C_{mn}$ values owing to its short length and low porosity. Conversely, the lowest interception storage values were determined for the P. strobus needle leaf litter. No significant differences in interception storage were established for the broadleaf litter. Moreover, except for A. holophylla litter, the broadleaf litter retained more water than the needle leaf litter. An increase in the intensity or duration of rainfall events leads to an increase in the water retention storage of litter. However, these factors do not influence the litter’s drainage capacity, which depends primarily on the force of gravity.

Forest fires have increased over the last several decades in many regions. Quantifying the general patterns of frequency, areal extent, and seasonality is crucial for understanding fire dynamics. This study aimed to investigate whether the spatial and temporal trends in forest fires have changed across South Korea. The Mann–Kendall test and Sen’s slope estimation were used to analyze the temporal trends in forest fire statistics from 1991 to 2020. The spatial dispersion of fire activity was detected using a standard deviation ellipse and hotspot analysis. An average of 451 fires have occurred annually over the last 30 years, with a yearly increase of 5.82 fires. The burned area in April and May accounted for 80.7% of the annual burned area. The length of the fire season in 2006–2020 was 25 days longer than that in 1991–2005. The risk of large fires is increasing and becoming more concentrated in the northeastern region, such as the Gwangwon and Gyeongsangbuk Provinces of South Korea. Both climate change and forest recovery have led to South Korea becoming more prone to fires. However, forest fires are not burning more intensely nor charring more areas than they did previously. This is probably due to the implementation of surveillance and initial attack systems. Targeted forest fire suppression policies can help to effectively reduce the risk of forest fires in South Korea.

Land cover change is a major environmental concern in the northwestern highlands of Ethiopia. This study detected land cover transitions over the past 30 years in the Chemoga basin (total area = 118,359 ha). Land cover maps were generated via the supervised classification of Landsat images with the help of the Google Earth (GE) images. A total of 218 unchanged land features sampled from GE images were used as the training datasets. Classification accuracy was evaluated by comparing classified images with 165 field observations during the 2017 field visit. The overall accuracy was 85.4% and the kappa statistic was 0.81, implying that the land classification was satisfactory. Agricultural land is the dominant land cover in the study basin, and increased in extent by 2,337 ha from 1987 to 2017. The second and third most dominant land cover types, grassland and woodland, decreased by 1.9% and 3.6%, respectively, over the past 30 years. The increase in agricultural lands was mostly due to the conversion of grasslands and woodlands, although some agricultural lands changed to Eucalyptus plantations and human settlements. The results revealed that the expansion of built-up space and agricultural lands was the major driver of fragmentation of the landscape, and degradation of natural resources in the Chemoga basin, Ethiopia.