• Journal of Korean Society on Water Environment
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• v.23 no.6
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• pp.897-905
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• 2007

Approximately 70% of Korea is composed of forest areas. Especially 48% of agricultural field is practiced at highland areas over 400 m in elevation in Kangwon province. Over 90% of highland agricultural farming is located at Kangwon province. Runoff characteristics at the mountainous area such as Kangwon province are largely affected by steep slopes, thus runoff estimation considering field slopes needs to be utilized for accurate estimation of direct runoff. Although many methods for runoff estimation are available, the Soil Conservation Service (SCS), now Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS), Curve Number (CN)-based method is used in this study. The CN values were obtained from many plot-years dataset obtained from mid-west areas of the United States, where most of the areas have less than 5% in slopes. Thus, the CN method is not suitable for accurate runoff estimation where significant areas are over 5% in slopes. Therefore, the CN values were adjusted based on the average slopes (25.8% at Doam-dam watershed) depending on the 5-day Antecedent Moisture Condition (AMC). In this study, the CN-based Long-Term Hydrologic Impact Assessment (L-THIA) direct runoff estimation model used and the Web-based Hydrograph Analysis Tool (WHAT) was used for direct runoff separation from the stream flow data. The $R^2$ value was 0.65 and the Nash-Sutcliffe coefficient value was 0.60 when no slope adjustment was made in CN method. However, the $R^2$ value was 0.69 and the Nash-Sutcliffe value was 0.69 with slope adjustment. As shown in this study, it is strongly recommended the slope adjustment in the CN direct runoff estimation should be made for accurate direct runoff prediction using the CN-based L-THIA model when applied to steep mountainous areas.