• Korean Journal of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.268-278
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• 2020

Flowering time has been put forward due to the recent abnormally warm winter, which often caused damages of flower buds by late frosts persistently. In the present study, cumulative chill unit and cumulative heat unit of Niitaka pear, which are required for releasing the endogenous dormancy and for flowering after breaking dormancy, respectively, were compared between flowering time prediction models used in South K orea. Observation weather data were collected at eight locations for the recent three years from 2018-2020. The dates of full bloom were also collected to determine the confidence level of models including DVR, mDVR and CD models. It was found that mDVR model tended to have smaller values (8.4%) of the coefficient of variation (cv) of chill units than any other models. The CD model tended to have a low value of cv (17.5%) for calculation of heat unit required to reach flowering after breaking dormancy. The mDVR model had the most accurate prediction of full bloom during the study period compared with the other models. The DVR model usually had poor skills in prediction of full bloom dates. In particular, the error of the DVR model was large especially in southern coastal areas (e.g., Ulju and Sacheon) where the temperature was warm. Our results indicated that the mDVR model had relatively consistent accuracy in prediction of full bloom dates over region and years of interest. When observation data for full bloom date are compiled for an extended period, the full bloom date can be predicted with greater accuracy improving the mDVR model further.

• The Sea:JOURNAL OF THE KOREAN SOCIETY OF OCEANOGRAPHY
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.11-36
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• 2021

The solar annual (Sa) and semiannual (Ssa) tides account for much of the non-uniform annual and seasonal variability observed in sea levels. These non-equilibrium tides depend on atmospheric variations, forced by changes in the Sun's distance and declination, as well as on hydrographic conditions. Here we employ tidal harmonic analyses to calculate Sa and Ssa harmonic constants for 21 Korean coastal tidal stations (TS), operated by the Korea Hydrographic and Oceanographic Agency. We used 19 year-long (1999 to 2017) 1 hr-interval sea level records from each site, and used two conventional harmonic analysis (HA) programs (Task2K and UTide). The stability of Sa harmonic constants was estimated with respect to starting date and record length of the data, and we examined the spatial distribution of the calculated Sa and Ssa harmonic constants. HA was performed on Incheon TS (ITS) records using 369-day subsets; the first start date was January 1, 1999, the subsequent data subset starting 24 hours later, and so on up until the final start date was December 27, 2017. Variations in the Sa constants produced by the two HA packages had similar magnitudes and start date sensitivity. Results from the two HA packages had a large difference in phase lag (about 78°) but relatively small amplitude (<1 cm) difference. The phase lag difference occurred in large part since Task2K excludes the perihelion astronomical variable. Sensitivity of the ITS Sa constants to data record length (i.e., 1, 2, 3, 5, 9, and 19 years) was also tested to determine the data length needed to yield stable Sa results. HA results revealed that 5 to 9 year sea level records could estimate Sa harmonic constants with relatively small error, while the best results are produced using 19 year-long records. As noted earlier, Sa amplitudes vary with regional hydrographic and atmospheric conditions. Sa amplitudes at the twenty one TS ranged from 15.0 to 18.6 cm, 10.7 to 17.5 cm, and 10.5 to 13.0 cm, along the west coast, south coast including Jejudo, and east coast including Ulleungdo, respectively. Except at Ulleungdo, it was found that the Ssa constituent contributes to produce asymmetric seasonal sea level variation and it delays (hastens) the highest (lowest) sea levels. Comparisons between monthly mean, air-pressure adjusted, and steric sea level variations revealed that year-to-year and asymmetric seasonal variations in sea levels were largely produced by steric sea level variation and inverted barometer effect.

• Korean Journal of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.13-34
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• 2022

Soil moisture data have been collected at 11 agrometeorological stations operated by The Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA). This study aimed to verify the accuracy of soil moisture data of KMA and develop a correction formula to be applied to improve their quality. The soil of the observation field was sampled to analyze its physical properties that affect soil water content. Soil texture was classified to be sandy loam and loamy sand at most sites. The bulk density of the soil samples was about 1.5 g/cm³ on average. The content of silt and clay was also closely related to bulk density and water holding capacity. The EnviroSCAN model, which was used as a reference sensor, was calibrated using the self-manufactured "reference soil moisture observation system". Comparison between the calibrated reference sensor and the field sensor of KMA was conducted at least three times at each of the 11 sites. Overall, the trend of fluctuations over time in the measured values of the two sensors appeared similar. Still, there were sites where the latter had relatively lower soil moisture values than the former. A linear correction formula was derived for each site and depth using the range and average of the observed data for the given period. This correction formula resulted in an improvement in agreement between sensor values at the Suwon site. In addition, the detailed approach was developed to estimate the correction value for the period in which a correction formula was not calculated. In summary, the correction of soil moisture data at a regular time interval, e.g., twice a year, would be recommended for all observation sites to improve the quality of soil moisture observation data.

• Korean Journal of Environmental Biology
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• v.39 no.4
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• pp.526-535
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• 2021

Spatial sampling design plays an important role in GIS-based modeling studies because it increases modeling efficiency while reducing the cost of sampling. In the field of agricultural systems, research demand for high-resolution spatial databased modeling to predict and evaluate climate change impacts is growing rapidly. Accordingly, the need and importance of spatial sampling design are increasing. The purpose of this study was to design spatial sampling of paddy fields (11,386 grids with 1 km spatial resolution) in Korea for use in agricultural spatial modeling. A stratified random sampling design was developed and applied in 2030s, 2050s, and 2080s under two RCP scenarios of 4.5 and 8.5. Twenty-five weather and four soil characteristics were used as stratification variables. Stratification and sample allocation were optimized to ensure minimum sample size under given precision constraints for 16 target variables such as crop yield, greenhouse gas emission, and pest distribution. Precision and accuracy of the sampling were evaluated through sampling simulations based on coefficient of variation (CV) and relative bias, respectively. As a result, the paddy field could be optimized in the range of 5 to 21 strata and 46 to 69 samples. Evaluation results showed that target variables were within precision constraints (CV<0.05 except for crop yield) with low bias values (below 3%). These results can contribute to reducing sampling cost and computation time while having high predictive power. It is expected to be widely used as a representative sample grid in various agriculture spatial modeling studies.

• Proceedings of the Korea Water Resources Association Conference
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• 2021.06a
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• pp.6-7
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• 2021

Vegetation development in rivers is one of the important issues not only in academic fields such as geomorphology, ecology, hydraulics, etc., but also in river management practices. The problem of river vegetation is directly connected to the harmony of conflicting values of flood management and ecosystem conservation. In Korea, since the 2000s, the issue of river vegetation and land formation has been continuously raised under various conditions, such as the regulating rivers downstream of the dams, the small eutrophicated tributary rivers, and the floodplain sites for the four major river projects. In this background, this study proposes a method for classifying the distribution of vegetation in rivers based on remote sensing data, and presents the results of applying this to the Naeseong Stream. The Naeseong Stream is a representative example of the river landscape that has changed due to vegetation development from 2014 to the latest. The remote sensing data used in the study are images of Sentinel 1 and 2 satellites, which is operated by the European Aerospace Administration (ESA), and provided by Google Earth Engine. For the ground truth, manually classified dataset on the surface of the Naeseong Stream in 2016 were used, where the area is divided into eight types including water, sand and herbaceous and woody vegetation. The classification method used a random forest classification technique, one of the machine learning algorithms. 1,000 samples were extracted from 10 pre-selected polygon regions, each half of them were used as training and verification data. The accuracy based on the verification data was found to be 82~85%. The model established through training was also applied to images from 2016 to 2020, and the process of changes in vegetation zones according to the year was presented. The technical limitations and improvement measures of this paper were considered. By providing quantitative information of the vegetation distribution, this technique is expected to be useful in practical management of vegetation such as thinning and rejuvenation of river vegetation as well as technical fields such as flood level calculation and flow-vegetation coupled modeling in rivers.

• Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
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• v.32 no.6
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• pp.377-388
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• 2023

Carbon management is emerging as an important factor for global warming control, and land use change is considered one of the causes. To quantify the changes in carbon stocks due to development, this study attempted to calculate carbon storage by borrowing the formula of the InVEST Carbon Storage and Sequestration Model (InVEST Model). Before analyzing carbon stocks, a carbon pool was compiled based on previous studies in Korea. Then, we estimated the change in carbon stocks according to the development of Osong National Industrial Park (ONIP) and the application of alternatives. The analysis shows that 16,789.5 MgC will be emitted under Alternative 1 and 16,305.3 MgC under Alternative 2. These emissions account for 44.4% and 43.1% of the pre-project carbon stock, respectively, and shows that choosing Alternative 2 is advantageous for reducing carbon emissions. The difference is likely due to the difference in grassland area between Alternatives 1 and 2. Even if Alternative 2 is selected, efforts are needed to increase the carbon storage effect by managing the appropriate level of green cover in the grassland, creating multi-layered vegetation, and installing low-energy facilities. In addition, it is suggested to conserve wetlands that can be lost during the stream improvement process or to create artificial wetlands to increase carbon storage. The assessment of carbon storage using carbon pools by land cover can improve the objectivity of comparison and evaluation analysis results for land use plans in Environmental Impact Assessment and Strategic Environmental Impact Assessment. In addition, the carbon pool generated in this study is expected to be used as a basis for improving the accuracy of such analyses.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.39 no.5_3
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• pp.1009-1029
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• 2023

Urban trees play a vital role in urban ecosystems,significantly reducing impervious surfaces and impacting carbon cycling within the city. Although previous research has demonstrated the efficacy of employing artificial intelligence in conjunction with airborne light detection and ranging (LiDAR) data to generate urban tree information, the availability and cost constraints associated with LiDAR data pose limitations. Consequently, this study employed freely accessible, high-resolution multispectral satellite imagery (i.e., Sentinel-2 data) to estimate fractional tree canopy cover (FTC) within the urban confines of Suwon, South Korea, employing machine learning techniques. This study leveraged a median composite image derived from a time series of Sentinel-2 images. In order to account for the diverse land cover found in urban areas, the model incorporated three types of input variables: average (mean) and standard deviation (std) values within a 30-meter grid from 10 m resolution of optical indices from Sentinel-2, and fractional coverage for distinct land cover classes within 30 m grids from the existing level 3 land cover map. Four schemes with different combinations of input variables were compared. Notably, when all three factors (i.e., mean, std, and fractional cover) were used to consider the variation of landcover in urban areas(Scheme 4, S4), the machine learning model exhibited improved performance compared to using only the mean of optical indices (Scheme 1). Of the various models proposed, the random forest (RF) model with S4 demonstrated the most remarkable performance, achieving R² of 0.8196, and mean absolute error (MAE) of 0.0749, and a root mean squared error (RMSE) of 0.1022. The std variable exhibited the highest impact on model outputs within the heterogeneous land covers based on the variable importance analysis. This trained RF model with S4 was then applied to the entire Suwon region, consistently delivering robust results with an R² of 0.8702, MAE of 0.0873, and RMSE of 0.1335. The FTC estimation method developed in this study is expected to offer advantages for application in various regions, providing fundamental data for a better understanding of carbon dynamics in urban ecosystems in the future.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
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• v.82 no.4
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• pp.889-902
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• 2021

Purpose To assess the diagnostic performance of contrast-enhanced ultrasound (CEUS) for additional MR-detected enhancing lesions and to determine whether or not kinetic pattern results comparable to dynamic contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (DCE-MRI) of the breast can be obtained using the quantitative analysis of CEUS. Materials and Methods In this single-center prospective study, a total of 71 additional MR-detected breast lesions were included. CEUS examination was performed, and lesions were categorized according to the Breast Imaging-Reporting and Data System (BI-RADS). The sensitivity, specificity, and diagnostic accuracy of CEUS were calculated by comparing the BI-RADS category to the final pathology results. The degree of agreement between CEUS and DCE-MRI kinetic patterns was evaluated using weighted kappa. Results On CEUS, 46 lesions were assigned as BI-RADS category 4B, 4C, or 5, while 25 lesions category 3 or 4A. The diagnostic performance of CEUS for enhancing lesions on DCE-MRI was excellent, with 84.9% sensitivity, 94.4% specificity, and 97.8% positive predictive value. A total of 57/71 (80%) lesions had correlating kinetic patterns and showed good agreement (weighted kappa = 0.66) between CEUS and DCE-MRI. Benign lesions showed excellent agreement (weighted kappa = 0.84), and invasive ductal carcinoma (IDC) showed good agreement (weighted kappa = 0.69). Conclusion The diagnostic performance of CEUS for additional MR-detected breast lesions was excellent. Accurate kinetic pattern assessment, fairly comparable to DCE-MRI, can be obtained for benign and IDC lesions using CEUS.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
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• v.82 no.5
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• pp.1196-1206
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• 2021

Purpose To construct a standard dataset of contrast-enhanced CT images of liver tumors to test the performance and safety of artificial intelligence (AI)-based algorithms for clinical decision support systems (CDSSs). Materials and Methods A consensus group of medical experts in gastrointestinal radiology from four national tertiary institutions discussed the conditions to be included in a standard dataset. Seventy-five cases of hepatocellular carcinoma, 75 cases of metastasis, and 30-50 cases of benign lesions were retrieved from each institution, and the final dataset consisted of 300 cases of hepatocellular carcinoma, 300 cases of metastasis, and 183 cases of benign lesions. Only pathologically confirmed cases of hepatocellular carcinomas and metastases were enrolled. The medical experts retrieved the medical records of the patients and manually labeled the CT images. The CT images were saved as Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) files. Results The medical experts in gastrointestinal radiology constructed the standard dataset of contrast-enhanced CT images for 783 cases of liver tumors. The performance and safety of the AI algorithm can be evaluated by calculating the sensitivity and specificity for detecting and characterizing the lesions. Conclusion The constructed standard dataset can be utilized for evaluating the machine-learning-based AI algorithm for CDSS.

• Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging
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• v.41 no.3
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• pp.234-240
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• 2007

Purpose: In this study we propose a block-iterative method for reconstructing Compton scattered data. This study shows that the well-known expectation maximization (EM) approach along with its accelerated version based on the ordered subsets principle can be applied to the problem of image reconstruction for Compton camera. This study also compares several methods of constructing subsets for optimal performance of our algorithms. Materials and Methods: Three reconstruction algorithms were implemented; simple backprojection (SBP), EM, and ordered subset EM (OSEM). For OSEM, the projection data were grouped into subsets in a predefined order. Three different schemes for choosing nonoverlapping subsets were considered; scatter angle-based subsets, detector position-based subsets, and both scatter angle- and detector position-based subsets. EM and OSEM with 16 subsets were performed with 64 and 4 iterations, respectively. The performance of each algorithm was evaluated in terms of computation time and normalized mean-squared error. Results: Both EM and OSEM clearly outperformed SBP in all aspects of accuracy. The OSEM with 16 subsets and 4 iterations, which is equivalent to the standard EM with 64 iterations, was approximately 14 times faster in computation time than the standard EM. In OSEM, all of the three schemes for choosing subsets yielded similar results in computation time as well as normalized mean-squared error. Conclusion: Our results show that the OSEM algorithm, which have proven useful in emission tomography, can also be applied to the problem of image reconstruction for Compton camera. With properly chosen subset construction methods and moderate numbers of subsets, our OSEM algorithm significantly improves the computational efficiency while keeping the original quality of the standard EM reconstruction. The OSEM algorithm with scatter angle- and detector position-based subsets is most available.