• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.34 no.6_3
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• pp.1457-1468
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• 2018

The sigma naught (${\sigma}^0$) equation is essential to calculate geo-physical properties from Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images for the applications such as ground target identification,surface classification, sea wind speed calculation, and soil moisture estimation. In this paper, we are suggesting new Kompsat-5 (K5) Radar Cross Section (RCS) and ${\sigma}^0$ equations reflecting the final SAR processor update and absolute radiometric calibration in order to increase the application of K5 SAR images. Firstly, we analyzed the accuracy of the K5 RCS equation by using trihedral corner reflectors installed in the Kompsat calibration site in Mongolia. The average difference between the calculated values using RCS equation and the measured values with K5 SAR processor was about $0.2dBm^2$ for Spotlight and Stripmap imaging modes. In addition, the verification of the K5 ${\sigma}^0$ equation was carried out using the TerraSAR-X (TSX) and Sentinel-1A (S-1A) SAR images over Amazon rainforest, where the backscattering characteristics are not significantly affected by the seasonal change. The calculated ${\sigma}^0$ difference between K5 and TSX/S-1A was less than 0.6 dB. Considering the K5 absolute radiometric accuracy requirement, which is 2.0 dB ($1{\sigma}$), the average difference of $0.2dBm^2$ for RCS equation and the maximum difference of 0.6 dB for ${\sigma}^0$ equation show that the accuracies of the suggested equations are relatively high. In the future, the validity of the suggested RCS and ${\sigma}^0$ equations is expected to be verified through the application such as sea wind speed calculation, where quantitative analysis is possible.

• The Sea:JOURNAL OF THE KOREAN SOCIETY OF OCEANOGRAPHY
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.208-225
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• 2019

To understand the mean surface circulation and surface currents in the East Sea, trajectories of surface drifters passed through the East Sea from 1991 to 2017 were analyzed. By analyzing the surface drifter trajectory data, the main paths of surface ocean currents were grouped and the variation in each main current path was investigated. The East Korea Warm Current (EKWC) heading northward separates from the coast at $36{\sim}38^{\circ}N$ and flows to the northeast until $131^{\circ}E$. In the middle (from $131^{\circ}E$ to $137^{\circ}E$) of the East Sea, the average latitude of the currents flowing eastward ranges from 36 to $40^{\circ}N$ and the currents meander with large amplitude. When the average latitude of the surface drifter paths was in the north (south) of $37.5^{\circ}N$, the meandering amplitude was about 50 (100) km. The most frequent route of surface drifters in the middle of the East Sea was the path along $37.5-38.5^{\circ}N$. The surface drifters, which were deployed off the coast of Vladivostok in the north of the East Sea, moved to the southwest along the coast and were separated from the coast to flow southeastward along the cyclonic circulation around the Japan Basin. And, then, the drifters moved to the east along $39-40^{\circ}N$. The mean surface current vector and mean speed were calculated in each lattice with $0.25^{\circ}$ grid spacing using the velocity data of surface drifters which passed through each lattice. The current variance ellipses were calculated with $0.5^{\circ}$ grid spacing. Because the path of the EKWC changes every year in the western part of the Ulleung Basin and the current paths in the Yamato Basin keep changing with many eddies, the current variance ellipses are relatively large in these region. We present a schematic map of the East Sea surface current based on the surface drifter data. The significance of this study is that the surface ocean circulation of the East Sea, which has been mainly studied by numerical model simulations and the sea surface height data obtained from satellite altimeters, was analyzed based on in-situ Lagrangian observational current data.

• Journal of Korean Society of Coastal and Ocean Engineers
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• v.32 no.6
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• pp.587-601
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• 2020

The ocean circulation was simulated in the East Sea and Ulleungdo-Dokdo region using ROMS (Regional Ocean Modeling System) model. By adopting the East Sea 3 km model and the HYCOM 9 km data, Ulleungdo 1 km model and Ulleungdo-Dokdo 300 m model were constructed with one-way grid nesting method. During the model development, a correction method was proposed for the distortion of the open boundary data which may be caused by the bathymetry data difference between the mother and child models and the interpolation/extrapolation method. Using this model, a super-high resolution ocean circulation with a horizontal resolution of 300 m near the Ulleungdo and Dokdo region was simulated for year 2018. In spite of applying the same conditions except for the initial and boundary data, the numerical models result indicated significantly different characteristics in the study area. Therefore, these results were compared and verified by using the surface current data estimated by satellites altimeter data and temperature data from NIFS (National Institute of Fisheries Science). They suggest that in general, the improvement of the one-way grid nesting with the HYCOM data on RMSE, Mean Bias, Pattern correlation and Vector correlation is greater in 300 m model than in the 1 km model. However, the nesting results of using East Sea 3 km model showed that simulations of the 1 km model were better than 300 m model. The models better resolved distinct ridge/trough structures of isotherms in the vertical sections of water temperature when using the higher horizontal resolution. Furthermore, Karman vortex street was simulated in Ulleungdo-Dokdo 300 m model due to the terrain effect of th islands that was not shown in the Ulleungdo 1 km model.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.38 no.2
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• pp.189-198
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• 2022

In this present study, we investigated the effect of the offset correction factor calculation method on the sulfur dioxide (SO₂) column density in the SO₂ retrieval algorithm of the Geostationary Environment Monitoring Spectrometer (GEMS) launched in February 2020. The GEMS operational SO₂ retrieval algorithm is the Differential Optical Absorption Spectroscopy (DOAS) - Principal Component Analysis (PCA) Hybrid algorithm. In the GEMS Hybrid algorithm, the offset correction process is essential to correct the absorption effect of ozone appearing in the SO₂ slant column density (SCD) obtained after spectral fitting using DOAS. Since the SO₂ column density may depend on the conditions for calculating the offset correction factor, it is necessary to apply an appropriate offset correction value. In this present study, the offset correction values were calculated for days with many cloud pixels and few cloud pixels, respectively. And a comparison of the SO₂ column density retrieved by applying each offset correction factor to the GEMS operational SO₂ retrieval algorithm was performed. When the offset correction value was calculated using radiance data of GEMS on a day with many cloud pixels was used, the standard deviation of the SO₂ column density around India and the Korean Peninsula, which are the edges of the GEMS observation area, was 1.27 DU, and 0.58 DU, respectively. And around Hong Kong, where there were many cloud pixels, the SO₂ standard deviation was 0.77 DU. On the other hand, when the offset correction value calculated using the GEMS data on the day with few cloud pixels was used, the standard deviation of the SO₂ column density slightly decreased around India (0.72 DU), Korean Peninsula (0.38 DU), and Hong Kong (0.44 DU). We found that the SO₂ retrieval was relatively stable compared to the SO₂ retrieval case using the offset correction value on the day with many cloud pixels. Accordingly, to minimize the uncertainty of the GEMS SO₂ retrieval algorithm and to obtain a stable retrieval, it is necessary to calculate the offset correction factor under appropriate conditions.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.38 no.5_1
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• pp.497-510
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• 2022

Agricultural reservoirs are essential structures for water supplies during dry period in the Korean peninsula, where water resources are temporally unequally distributed. For efficient water management, systematic and effective monitoring of medium-small reservoirs is required. Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) provides a way for continuous monitoring of those, with its capability of all-weather observation. This study aims to evaluate the applicability of SAR in monitoring medium-small reservoirs using Sentinel-1 (10 m resolution) and Capella X-SAR (1 m resolution), at Chari (CR), Galjeon (GJ), Dwitgol (DG) reservoirs located in Ulsan, Korea. Water detected results applying Z fuzzy function-based threshold (Z-thresh) and Chan-vese (CV), an object detection-based segmentation algorithm, are quantitatively evaluated using UAV-detected water boundary (UWB). Accuracy metrics from Z-thresh were 0.87, 0.89, 0.77 (at CR, GJ, DG, respectively) using Sentinel-1 and 0.78, 0.72, 0.81 using Capella, and improvements were observed when CV was applied (Sentinel-1: 0.94, 0.89, 0.84, Capella: 0.92, 0.89, 0.93). Boundaries of the waterbody detected from Capella agreed relatively well with UWB; however, false- and un-detections occurred from speckle noises, due to its high resolution. When masked with optical sensor-based supplementary images, improvements up to 13% were observed. More effective water resource management is expected to be possible with continuous monitoring of available water quantity, when more accurate and precise SAR-based water detection technique is developed.