• Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.41-50
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• 2016

Environmental impact assessment has been implemented for more than 30 years in Korea. During that period, various amendments were carried out about target plan and assessment factors. However, in current environmental impact assessment act, only a few factors has been considered for soil environment assessment. This study analyzes the national and foreign environmental impact assessment guidelines on soil related factors and figures out the problems and implications of Korean environmental impact assessment. In Korea, water quality, topography and geology, hydraulics and hydrology, and soil contamination were analyzed as a soil related factors. The main assessment targets were pollution related factors such as soil pollution levels, amount of rainfall runoff, and non-point sources. However, in the case of foreign guidelines, soil compaction, soil sealing, and soil salinization is being analyzed for evaluating function and quality of soil environment. The revision of soil-related factors are needed for sustainable development of Korea.

• Journal of Soil and Groundwater Environment
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.104-112
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• 2015

In this study, several factors which can have an effect on soil during strategic environmental assessment (SEA) are analyzed against a total of 86 administrative plans and development basic plans of the SEA. Other factors which could have influences on soil are also analyzed after examining contents and rules required for preparing the SEA statement. Then, we propose assessment factors on soils during the SEA procedure. We think that this study could give baseline data to set up assessment items, criteria, and techniques that are highly necessitated in preparation of the SEA statement in the near future.

• Journal of Soil and Groundwater Environment
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• v.22 no.6
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• pp.29-36
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• 2017

Universal soil loss equation (USLE) has been frequently employed to estimate potential soil loss in land since it was developed based on the statewide data measured and collected in the United States. The equation is an empirical model mainly used for U.S. soil, thus it has been recently modified to reflect Korean soil conditions and named as Korean Soil Loss Equation (KORSLE). The modified equation was implemented in ArcGIS software, and used for estimation of potential soil loss from 2003 to 2016 in the thirty-eight Water Protection Districts. Five out of the thirty-eight districts were identified as the area of potential soil erosion most severly. In those five districts, potential soil erosion were estimated to be more than 50 Mg/ha/year that requires site investigation under supervision of the Korean Ministry of Environment. Distinctive site characteristics were found in the potential soil loss estimation such that the districts of low potential soil loss had low five factors in the aggregate. However, if one of more factors are dominantly large, the potential soil loss significantly increased. This study provides a useful tool to identify the potential areas for soil erosion and the important factors that play an important role in the estimation process.

• Korean Journal of Soil Science and Fertilizer
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• v.45 no.3
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• pp.360-369
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• 2012

Parent material, climate, topography, biological factors, and time are considered five soil forming factors. This study was conducted to elucidate the effects of several environment factors on soil distribution using quantitative analysis method, called soil series estimation algorithm in the soils of Jeju Island. We selected environment factors including mean temperature, annual precipitation, surface geology, altitude, slope, aspect, altitude difference within 1 $km^2$ area, topographic wetness index, distance from the shore, distance from the mountain peak, and landuse for a quantitative analysis. We analyzed the ranges of environment factors for each soil series and calculated probabilities of possible-soil series for certain locations using estimation algorithm. The algorithm can predicted exact soil series on the soil map with correctness of 33% on $1^{st}$ ranking, 62% within $2^{nd}$ ranking, 74% within $5^{th}$ ranking after estimating using randomly extracted environment factors. In predicted soil map, soil sequences of Entisols-Alfisols-Andisols on northern area and Alfisols-Ultisols-Andisols on western area can be suggested along increasing altitude. More modeling studies will be needed for the genesis process of soils in Jeju Island.

• Journal of Soil and Groundwater Environment
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.15-24
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• 2015

The soil ecosystem is a complex system performing particularly complicated and varied functions, such as providing a habitat for organisms, acting as a medium for plant cultivation and growth, and functioning as a buffer against external materials in the environment. To assess whether these important functions of the soil ecosystem are executed appropriately, the concept of soil ecosystem health has been introduced, which is defined as the ability to perform the specific functions of the soil ecosystem. Understanding soil properties and soil indicators related to soil functions is essential to assess the soil health. In this study, systems, the indicators, and evaluation factors for assessing soil ecosystem health employed in a number of countries were investigated and discussed. In particular, it is necessary to introduce a technique for the evaluation of soil ecosystem health in Korea and to develop techniques and indicators appropriate to the soil ecosystem and status in Korea.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Environmental Restoration Technology
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• v.9 no.6
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• pp.13-22
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• 2006

The purpose of this study is to propose rational methods in order to maintain vegetation condition and soil environment based on the analysis of tree growth in relation to the soil environment, which is one of the most significant environmental factors on vegetation condition in urban parks and open spaces. The result of the study can be described as below;The soil on every study site had strong acidity. In particular, study sites around industrial district and central business district showed extreme soil acidity. Therefore, soil management system is needed in urban parks and green spaces around those areas. Among Cambium Electric Resistance classified by locations of urban parks and open spaces, one in the costal area was the lowest. The Cambium Electric Resistance in the industrial area was the highest. Therefore, soil condition and locational environment in the industrial area are highly related to the Cambium Electric Resistance. Among the factors, which affect Cambium Electric Resistance in different locations, inorganic content was found to be the main factor in all of the study sites. Inorganic content was an important factor to the Cambium Electric Resistance in study sites located in industrial and central business districts. In the study sites located in costal area, Soil acidity was found to be other important factors that affect Cambium Electric Resistance. To improve the soil acidity, soil buffering ability should be improved from activating microorganisms in the soil by using lime and organic material, Since it takes a long time to make a change in the soil structure, well planed maintenance system is required by mid-term or long-term plans.

• Journal of Soil and Groundwater Environment
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• v.23 no.5
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• pp.37-44
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• 2018

Soil trace elements and their bioaccumulation in agricultural products have attracted widespread concerns, yet the crop uptake characteristics of trace elements in different soil-plants systems have been rarely investigated. Experiments were carried out to investigate the effect of soil properties on trace element concentrations in cabbage and radish. Soil pH and total organic matter were major factors influencing trace elements transfer from soil to vegetables. Inclusion of other soil properties in the stepwise regression analysis improved the regression models for predicting trace element concentrations. Consideration of other soil properties should be taken into account for more precise prediction of trace element concentrations in the two vegetables, which could help quantitatively evaluate the ecologic risk of toxic trace elements accumulation in crops.

• Journal of Soil and Groundwater Environment
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.12-29
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• 2011

Risk-based screening levels (RBSLs) of some pollutants for residential adults were derived with risk assessment tools developed by United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA), American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM), and Korea Ministry of Environment (KMOE) and compared each other. To make the comparison simple, ingestion of soil, dermal contact with soil, outdoor inhalation of vapors, indoor inhalation of vapors, and inhalation of soil particulates were chosen as exposure pathways. The results showed that the derived RBSLs varied for every exposure pathway. For direct exposure pathways (i.e., ingestion of soil and dermal contact with soil), the derived RBSLs varied mainly due to the different default values for exposure factors and toxicity data. When identical default values for the parameters were used, the same RBSLs could be derived regardless of the assessment tools used. For inhalation of vapors and inhalation of soil particulates, however, different analysis methods for cross-media transfer rates were used and different assumptions were established for each tool, identical RBSLs could not be obtained even if the same default values for exposure factors were used. Especially for inhalation of soil particulates pathway, screening level derived using KMOE approach (most conservative) was approximately 5000~10000 times lower than the screening level derived using ASTM approach (least conservative). Our results suggest that, when deriving RBSL using a specific tool, it is a prerequisite to technically review the analysis methods for cross-media transfer rates as well as to understand how the assessment tool derives the default values for exposure factors.

• Proceedings of the Korean Geotechical Society Conference
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• 2005.10a
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• pp.649-654
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• 2005

Shallow slope failures in residual soil during periods of prolonged infiltration are common over the world. One of the key factors that dominate slope stability is hydrological response associated with infiltration. Hence, the soil-water profile during rainfall infiltration into unsaturated soil must me examined to evaluate slope stability. However, the hydraulic response of unsaturated soil is complicated by inherent uncertainties of the soil hydraulic properties. This study presents a methodology for assessing the effects of parameter uncertainty of hydraulic properties on the response of a analytical infiltration model using first-order reliability method. The unsaturated soil properties are considered as uncertain variables with means, standard deviations, and marginal probability distributions. Sensitivities of the probabilistic outcome to the basic uncertainties in the input random variables are provided through importance factors.

• Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.51-62
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• 2016

Recently, soil has been recognized as a crucially important resource that even can change the quality of life. Also, recent studies have gradually mentioned the importance of assessing soil impact induced by development plans and projects. In this study, after detailed soil assessement items were selected from our national environmental policies and international agreements, they were tested for the long-term dam construction planning in order to ensure more suitable implementation of strategic environment assessment(SEA). We found that soil resources can be impacted by diverse factors such as soil erosion, soil organic matters, soil moving, soil biodiversity, and others. Such detailed factors are found to be overlapped with the pervious EIA factors. Accordingly, additional studies would be required for finding out more reasonable connection between assessment factors during any SEA progress.