Scope and knowledge gap of ecology and civil engineering: Present situation and future dimensions

The majority of published papers in ECE were relating to aquatic ecosystems and written by university and/or institute members. Other fields such as terrestrial or coastal ecosystems should be more focused, and consultant and government employee should be encouraged to submit their case studies. As a philosophy and a target of ECE, interdependence between ecology and civil engineering, holistic view of environment, target for restoration, and ecological health were discussed. At investigation and planning stage, life history trait, habitat condition, disturbance, material cycle, interactions between organisms were examined. The focus should be given to the key habitat corresponding to the key life-stage such as reproduction stage. IBI, RHS and habitat evaluation by GIS were introduced and other multivariate statistical analyses were employed. I believe that evaluation of ecosystem health in a broad scale is an important theme to build effective conservation or restoration plan. At the implementation stage, I doubt the necessity to draw the detail design of engineering structures, rather I feel it produce great mischief. Design with nature or passive restoration should be the first priority. The studies on this stage were very few, probably because evaluation of engineering works was not planned before implementation, and evaluation has not been fulfilled. Thus, at monitoring and evaluation stage, Before-After-(Reference)-Control-Impact design were recommended, and critical lines to refine or improve management plan and engineering works should be presented before implementation.