ISSN 2671-9274 Vol.7 No.4 / august 30 2019 Research Briefs KEI prioritizing ecologically important areas for increasing protected area in the republic of korea: application of an ecological engineering approach writing. kyung ah koo, il chan oh, hyun woo lee, hyun jung hong, sun wook park convention on biological diversity(cbd)has strongly encouraged the parties to achieve aichi biodiversity target11, which calls for retaining at least 17% protected areas of terrestrial ecosystem. howeer, the terrestrial protected area of republic of korea(rok) is 15.5%, and rok needs to increase it ny 1.5% by 2020. for this , this research 1)developed an approach to identify evologically imporant area at local scales, especially for national parks, 2) suggested that the results should be applied to policy-making processes to extend the protected area, and 3) showed the effectiveness of this methodology applying it to the jeju-do ecosystem in rok. ◆ while most developed countries have consid-ered various biotic and abiotic factors, ecological processes, migration routes, habiat connectiv-ity, ecosystem services, etc. to determinate the protected areas, rok has considered a few factors focusing on biodiversity, landscape, and the habitats of endangered oranisms, however, for sustainable management of our nature, we need comprehensive understanding of various ecosystem factors and interactions among them at local scales in designation protected area. for this, we first developed a spatial model based on the ecological engineering approach and then applied this model to the jeju-do-ecosys-em to find out ecologically imporant areas and suggested the priority area for a npovel protected area. in particular, we considered future land-use ahcnge as well as the current land cover in determining the priority area for the novel pro-tected area. the results showed that the priority 01 kei reaserch briefs