• Journal of Environmental Policy
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.57-82
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• 2005

In this study, we propose methods for. the efficient management and integrity of groundwater in response to a diminishing supply. As an alternative water resource for the future. we investigated and comparatively analyzed the quality standards of groundwater in the US (New York, Wisconsin and Texas), Austria, Netherlands, Canada, Japan and United Kingdom. These developed countries heavily depend on groundwater, more than 70%, for drinking water and apply those drinking water standards to groundwater quality. However, there exists few differences in the quality standards of groundwater among the countries, because each country possesses its own individual environment and management. In Korea, surface water pollution is getting serious and its water resources are diminishing. Therefore we propose several new quality criteria that many countries regulate at these days for their efficient management of groundwater. There is a need to divide BTEX criterion into Benzene, Toluene, Ethylbenzene and Xylene, individually. In. addition, it is needed to establish BTEX criteria into agricultural water and industrial water use standards as well as daily life use standards. Also, regulations for some PAHs, showing carcinogenicity, are required. Due to rapid industrialization various hazardous chemicals were utilized and their uses are increasing each year. Therefore, there is a strong need to introduce n~w standards and tighter regulations of the levels. At the same time, the criterion of nitrogenous compounds need' to be regulated individually in order to prevent the damage incurred by the compounds. Several developed countries have established standards for radon, previously caused environmental accidents in Korea. Therefore, we propose the necessity of groundwater quality standards for radon in this study.

• Journal of Soil and Groundwater Environment
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.23-32
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• 2013

Korean groundwater quality standards were established in 1994, and revised in 2003 and 2010. The substances for which standards have been developed are classified into two groups, general pollutants, 4, and specific pollutants, 15. The standards have been applied to household water use, agriculture, aquaculture, and industrial use. However, there is no systematic methodology for either selecting candidate substances or establishing groundwater standards. We investigated various derivation methodologies for groundwater standards used by the European Commission and 27 member states and compared their methods for determining threshold values. The European Commission presented to their member states groundwater standards for two substances and a list of required substances for derivation of threshold values along with the member states. Interestingly, they first considered national background levels and then considered other criteria for water protection, such as drinking water standards, environmental quality standards, and irrigation standards. We suggest that Korean background levels in groundwater should be included in the methodology for establishing groundwater quality standards. These results may be useful in developing a systematic methodology for establishing Korean groundwater quality standards.

• Journal of Soil and Groundwater Environment
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• v.21 no.6
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• pp.22-35
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• 2016

Global climate change could have an impact on hydrological process of a watershed and result in problems with future water supply by influencing the recharge process into the aquifer. This study aims to assess the change of groundwater recharge rate by climate change and to predict the sustainability of groundwater resource in Pyoseon watershed, Jeju Island. For the prediction, the groundwater recharge rate of the study area was estimated based on two future climate scenarios (RCP 4.5, RCP 8.5) by using the Soil Water Balance (SWB) computer code. The calculated groundwater recharge rate was used for groundwater flow simulation and the change of groundwater level according to the climate change was predicted using a numerical simulation program (FEFLOW 6.1). The average recharge rate from 2020 to 2100 was predicted to decrease by 10~12% compared to the current situation (1990~2015) while the evapotranspiration and the direct runoff rate would increase at both climate scenarios. The decrease in groundwater recharge rate due to the climate change results in the decline of groundwater level. In some monitoring wells, the predicted mean groundwater level at the year of the lowest water level was estimated to be lower by 60~70 m than the current situation. The model also predicted that temporal fluctuation of groundwater recharge, runoff and evapotranspiration would become more severe as a result of climate change, making the sustainable management of water resource more challenging in the future. Our study results demonstrate that the future availability of water resources highly depends on climate change. Thus, intensive studies on climate changes and water resources should be performed based on the sufficient data, advanced climate change scenarios, and improved modeling methodology.

• Proceedings of the Korea Water Resources Association Conference
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• 2023.05a
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• pp.374-374
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• 2023

Groundwater is the main source of water on which relies many countries in case of emergency, this is the case of Japan in 2011 after the great Sendai Earthquake. This important resource is found to be heavily influenced by human induced factors such as wetland area reduction. For groundwater sustainable management in perfect cohesion with wetland it is important to understand the relationship between both resources. Wetlands have a strong interaction with both groundwater and surface water, influencing catchment hydrology and water quality. Quantifying groundwater-wetland interactions can help better identify locations for wetlands restoration and/or protection. This study uses observation data from piezometers and wetland to study the qualitative and quantitative aspects of the correlation. Groundwater level, wetland area, chemical, organic and inorganic contaminants are the important parameters used. the results proved that few contaminants in the wetland are found in groundwater and in general the wetland quality does not affect that much groundwater quality. The strong linear relationship found between wetland water level and nearest groundwater level proved that, in term of quantity, groundwater and wetland are strongly correlated. While wetland becoming dry, groundwater level has dropped in the region about 0.52m. The area of wetland was found to be lightly correlated with groundwater level, proving that wetlands dry has contributed to groundwater level declining. This study has showed that whilst rainfall variability contributed to the decline and loss of wetlands, the impacts from landuse changes and groundwater extraction were likely to be significant contributors to the observed losses.

• Proceedings of the Korea Water Resources Association Conference
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• 2005.05b
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• pp.29-38
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• 2005

It is important to understand groundwater conditions such as recharge, flow and hydrochemical process occurred within an aquifer for groundwater protection and groundwater resource management. Groundwater from the Triassic Sherwood Sandstone aquifer of North Yorkshire has been used for industrial purposes and domestic water supply. Tn order to understand the processes affecting groundwater chemistry and identify the sources of high chloride, sulphate and nitrate concentrations hydrochemical and isotopic measurements were carried out. Hydrochemical and isotopic measurements indicated that five groundwater types exist within the Sherwood Sandstone aquifer of study area. The results of hydrochemical and isotopic measurements showed that older groundwaters have different hydrochemical and isotopic characteristics from recent recharge water. It was also found that water-rock interactions are the dominant mechanism controlling the ${\delta}^{13}C$ composition of dissolved inorganic carbon, the ${\delta}^{34}S\;and\;{\delta}^{18}O$ composition of dissolved sulphate and the strontium isotope ratios ($^{87}Sr/^{86}Sr$) in recent recharge water and old groundwater. Several abstraction boreholes within the Selby wellfield have been contaminated by saline water. The isotopic data of saline groundwater samples taken from these abstraction boreholes indicate that saline waters are derived from the dissolution of the Triassic evaporites within the Mercia Mudstone.

• Journal of Soil and Groundwater Environment
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.18-26
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• 2017

The increasing frequency of droughts has been increasing the necessity of utilizing subsurface dams as reliable groundwater resources in areas where it is difficult to supply adequate agricultural water using only surface water. In this study, we analyzed the current status and actual conditions of five agricultural subsurface dams as well as the effect of obtaining additional groundwater from subsurface dams operated as one aspect of the sustainable integrated water management system. Based on the construction methods and functions of each subsurface dam, the five subsurface dams are classified into three types such as those that derive water from rivers, those that prevent seawater intrusion, and those that link to a main irrigation canal. The classification is based on various conditions including topography, reservoir location, irrigation facilities, and river and alluvial deposit distributions. Agricultural groundwater upstream of subsurface dams is obtained from four to five radial collector wells. From the study, the total amount of groundwater recovered from the subsurface dam is turned out to be about 29~44% of the total irrigation water demand, which is higher than that of general agricultural groundwater of about 4.6%.

• Journal of Soil and Groundwater Environment
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• v.18 no.6
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• pp.56-68
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• 2013

Community drinking water (CDW), mostly naturally flowing groundwater, plays important roles in supplying drinking water for urban and rural residents in Korea. Over 1,600 CDW facilities are distributed throughout the country, many of them situated in the outskirts of metropolitan cities. A large proportion of Korean people have become dependent on CDW for drinking due to a distrust of piped water's quality and a strong belief in the special medicinal effects of some CDWs. However, administrative and official management and the control of CDW facilities have been inadequate when compared with the strict examination and control of commercial bottled water, which is physically treated groundwater from deep bedrock aquifers. In this study, even though signs of anthropogenic contamination were not generally found, the tested chemical compositions of selected CDWs featured high enrichment of some constituents including Ca, Mg, Na, and HCO3 with natural origins such as water-rock interactions. Careless consumption of particular CDWs, which has no scientific basis, will not guarantee health improvement. Consequently, more intensive management of CDW facilities and a long-term interdisciplinary examination of the health effects of CDWs are needed to effectively protect people's health.

• Journal of Soil and Groundwater Environment
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• v.20 no.6
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• pp.8-18
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• 2015

Pollutants such as heavy metals and explosives originating from the military operational ranges can be migrated to adjacent surface water body or offsite soil, and can affect to local residents and aquatic ecosystem. Therefore, Korea Ministry of the National Defense has established various guidelines for environmental management including the installation of pollutant migration prevention facilities (PMPFs) and monitoring methodologies for heavy metals in the operational range soil and effluent and sediment of PMPFs. However, current guidelines neither address the explosive compounds such as 2, 4, 6-trinitrotoluene (TNT) and hexahydro-1,3,5-trinitro-1,3,5-triazine (RDX) nor suggest detailed environmental investigation protocol. This paper introduces the new “Environmental Management Manual for Military Firing Ranges”, which includes the environmental criteria for explosives as well as the detailed investigation protocol for the affected environmental media including soil, effluent and sediment of PMPFs.

• Proceedings of the Korea Water Resources Association Conference
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• 2022.05a
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• pp.149-149
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• 2022

Accurate quantitative evaluation of baseflow contribution to streamflow is imperative to address seasonal drought vulnerability, flood occurrence and groundwater management concerns for efficient and sustainable water resources management in watersheds. Several baseflow separation algorithms using recursive filters, graphical method and tracer or chemical balance have been developed but resulting baseflow outputs always show wide variations, thereby making it hard to determine best separation technique. Therefore, the current global shift towards implementation of artificial intelligence (AI) in water resources is employed to compare the performance of deep learning models with conventional hydrograph separation techniques to quantify baseflow contribution to streamflow of Piney River watershed, Tennessee from 2001-2021. Streamflow values are obtained from the USGS station 03602500 and modeled to generate values of Baseflow Index (BI) using Web-based Hydrograph Analysis (WHAT) model. Annual and seasonal baseflow outputs from the traditional separation techniques are compared with results of Long Short Term Memory (LSTM) and simple Gated Recurrent Unit (GRU) models. The GRU model gave optimal BFI values during the four seasons with average NSE = 0.98, KGE = 0.97, r = 0.89 and future baseflow volumes are predicted. AI offers easier and more accurate approach to groundwater management and surface runoff modeling to create effective water policy frameworks for disaster management.

• Advances in environmental research
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.95-111
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• 2023

Pollution, climate change, and waste accumulation are only some of the new problems that have arisen because of the exponential population growth of the past few decades. As the global population expands, managing municipal solid trash becomes increasingly difficult. This is by far the most difficult obstacle for governments to overcome, especially in less developed nations. The improper open dumping of trash, which is causing mayhem across the country, has two immediate effects: it contaminates groundwater and surface water. Air pollution and the accumulation of greenhouse gases are both exacerbated by the release of methane and other harmful waste gases. Leachate from the landfill leaks underground and pollutes groundwater. In most cases, leachate moves into the groundwater zone and pollutes it after forming in association with precipitation that infiltrates via waste. This has far-reaching effects on people's health and disturbs the natural environment. This review article critically examines the current state of Solid Waste Management (SWM), addressing both the highlighted concerns and the government management solutions that have been put in place to address these issues. In addition, the constraints, and difficulties that India will face in the future in terms of solid waste management and the role of models for such a system are discussed.