• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.33 no.6_1
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• pp.947-960
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• 2017

Soil moisture plays an important role to affect the Earth's radiative energy balance and water cycle. In general, satellite observations are useful for estimating the soil moisture content. Passive microwave satellites have an advantage of direct sensitivity on surface soil moisture. However, their coarse spatial resolutions (10-36 km) are not suitable for regional-scale hydrological applications. Meanwhile, in-situ ground observations of point-based soil moisture content have the disadvantage of spatially discontinuous information. This paper presents an experimental soil moisture retrieval using Sentinel-1 SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) with 10m spatial resolution for cropland in South Korea. We developed a soil moisture retrieval algorithm based on the technique of linear regression and SVR (support vector regression) using the ground observations at five in-situ sites and Sentinel-1 SAR data from April to October in 2015-2017 period. Our results showed the polarization dependency on the different soil sensitivities at backscattered signals, but no polarization dependence on the accuracies. No particular seasonal characteristics of the soil moisture retrieval imply that soil moisture is generally more affected by hydro-meteorology and land surface characteristics than by phenological factors. At the narrower range of incidence angles, the relationship between the backscattered signal and soil moisture content was more distinct because the decreasing surface interference increased the retrieval accuracies under the condition of evenly distributed soil moisture (during the raining period or on the paddy field). We had an overall error estimate of RMSE (root mean square error) of approximately 6.5%. Our soil moisture retrieval algorithm will be improved if the effects of surface roughness, geomorphology, and soil properties would be considered in the future works.

• Journal of Wetlands Research
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• v.21 no.spc
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• pp.28-38
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• 2019

Climate change on the Korean peninsula is progressing faster than the global average. For example, typhoons, extreme rainfall, heavy snow, cold, and heatwave that are occurring frequently. North Korea is particularly vulnerable to climate change-related natural disasters such as flooding and flooding due to long-term food shortages, energy shortages, and reckless deforestation and development. In addition, North Korea is classified as an unmeasured area due to political and social influences, making it difficult to obtain sufficient hydrologic data for hydrological analysis. Also, as interest in climate change has increased, studies on climate change have been actively conducted on the Korean Peninsula in various repair facilities and disaster countermeasures, but there are no cases of research on North Korea. Therefore, this study selects watershed characteristic variables that are easy to acquire in order to apply localization model to North Korea where it is difficult to obtain observed hydrologic data and estimates parameters based on meteorological and topographical characteristics of 16 dam basins in South Korea. Was calculated. In addition, as a result of reviewing the applicability of the parameter estimation equations calculated for the fifty thousand, Gangneungnamdaecheon, Namgang dam, and Yeonggang basins, the applicability of the parameter estimation equations to North Korea was very high.

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.52 no.12
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• pp.951-962
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• 2019

Producing consistent, accurate soil moisture data to be utilized as a reference dataset for researches related to hydrological cycle and natural disaster is being critical, but such techniques (e.g. quality control) are still limited to improve reliability of soil moisture data. In this study, analyses of soil moisture's behavior and quality control based on International Soil Moisture Network's (ISMN's) criteria were carried out in Yongdam study watershed, which is UNESCO-IHP' representative examination area in South Korea, to suggest a direction to improve the quality of soil moisture data. The results of the behavior analysis showed normal increasing/decreasing patterns following precipitation events in all stations except two (i.e. Bugui, Ancheon). As a result of applying quality flagging technique, there were no observation recordings in abnormal range, and freezing of soil moisture occurred within general range (~20%). Soil moisture rise without prior rainfall appeared about 4% and there were less than 0.01% for spike and 5% for plateau. Producing more reliable reference data will be possible if site-specific criteria for quality control are considered enough in the future.

• Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology(JNFCWT)
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.23-32
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• 2011

An engineering scale test, which is called KENTEX, was carried out to understand and to analyze the coupled thermal, hydrological and mechanical phenomena in the engineered barrier system(EBS) of Korean reference disposal system. Using the experimental data obtained from KENTEX, the water saturation processes in bentonite could be analyzed. From the comparison between the model calculation using ABAQUS and the experimental results, the difference of the water content between them in the unsaturating part was large because the drying phenomena due to moisture redistribution by the temperature gradient could not be included in the model. In the saturating part, the difference of the water content between them was decreased gradually and showed to be small in the full saturation. And the time of about 95% saturation could be estimated about 500 days from the model calculation and experimental results. Also it could be known that the moisture redistribution in the unsaturated part could not be affected on the saturation time of bentonite in the repository. Therefore, it is considered that this model could be used to quantitatively predict the water saturation time in bentonite as EBS for the disposal system.

• Korean Journal of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.56-68
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• 2011

Wet canopy evaporation ($E_{WC}$) has been recognized as a significant component of total evapotranspiration, especially in forests and therefore it is critical to accurately assess $E_{WC}$ to understand forest hydrological cycle. In this review, I focused on the measurement methods and evaluating the magnitudes of $E_{WC}$ at diverse forest types (e.g., deciduous, coniferous, mixed, and rain forests). I also present the general issues to be considered for $E_{WC}$ measurements. The commonly used measurement methods for $E_{WC}$ include the water balance, energy balance, and the Penman-Monteith (PM) methods. The magnitudes of $E_{WC}$ ranged from 5 to 54% of precipitation based on the literature review, showing a large variation even for a similar forest type possibly related to canopy structure, rainfall intensity, and other meteorological conditions. Therefore, it is difficult to draw a general conclusion on the contribution of $E_{WC}$ to evapotranspiration from a particular forest type. Errors can arise from the measurements of precipitation (due to varying wind effect) and throughfall (due to spatial variability caused by canopy structure) for water balance method, the measurements of sensible heat flux and heat storage for energy balance method, and the estimation of aerodynamic conductance and unaccounted sensible heat advection for the PM method. For a reliable estimation of $E_{WC}$, the combination of ecohydrological and micrometeorological methods is recommended.

• Journal of Wetlands Research
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.194-200
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• 2016

The impervious surface rate increased by urbanization causes various problems on the environment such as water cycle distortion, heat island effect, and non-point pollutant discharges. The Low Impact Development (LID) techniques are significantly considered as an important tool for stormwater management in urban areas and development projects. The main mechanisms of LID technologies are hydrological and environmental pollution reduction among soils, media, microorganisms, and plants. Especially, the media provides important functions on permeability and retention rate of stormwater runoff in LID facilities. Therefore, this research was performed to assess the pollutant removal efficiency for different types of media such as zeolite, wood chip, bottom ash, and bio-ceramic. All media show high pollutant removal efficiency of more than 60% for particulate materials and heavy metals. Double layered media is more effective in reducing heavy metals by providing diverse sizes of micro-pores and macro-pores compared to the single layered media. The results recommend the use of different sizes of media application is more cost-effective in LID than a single size of media. Furthermore, soluble proportion of total heavy metal in the stormwater is an important component in proper media selection and arrangement.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.51 no.6
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• pp.645-654
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• 2013

In this study, the management polices of micropollutants (MPs) were reviewed and the future management strategy was discussed considering climate change and etc. In Korea, the investigation of drinking water has been actively carried out for the priority contaminants as well as MPs. Recently river and lake waters have been also examined for MPs. However, the coverage and depth of the investigation is limited. Moreover, climate change is likely to increase air & water temperature and it will affect the hydrological cycle. Such changes may increase the residual concentrations of MPs in water system. As water reuse increases, the residual MPs of the recycled water may create public concerns. Thus, in a viewpoint of the precautionary principle, more stringent management of MPs is recommended for the drinking water and the body-contact water use. For the surface water, more studies are necessary to understand the ecological risk by MPs.

• Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.163-174
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• 2015

Urbanization caused various environmental problems like destruction of natural water cycle and increased urban flood. To solve these problems, LID(Low Impact Development) deserves attention. The main objective of LID is to restore the water circulation to the state before the development. In the previous studies about the LID, the runoff reduction effect is mainly discussed and the effects of each techniques of LID depending on rainfall types have not fully investigated. The objective of this research is to evaluate the effect of LID using the quantitative simulation of rainwater runoff as well as an amount of infiltration according to the rainfall and LID techniques. To evaluate the water circulation of LID on the development area, new land development areas of Hanam in South Korea is decided as the study site. In this research, hydrological model named STORM is used for the simulation of water balance associated with LID. Rainfall types are separated into two categories based on the rainfall intensity. And simulated LID techniques are green roof, permeable pavement and swale. Results of this research indicate that LID is effective on improvement of water balance in case of the low intensity rainfall event rather than the extreme event. The most effective LID technique is permeable pavement in case of the low intensity rainfall event and swale is effective in case of the high intensity rainfall event. The results of this study could be used as a reference when the spatial plan is made considering the water circulation.

• Atmosphere
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.19-33
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• 2016

Water vapor in the atmosphere is an important element that generates various meteorological phenomena and modifies a hydrological cycle. In general, the Yeongdong region has a lot of snow compared to the other regions in winter due to the complex topography and an adjacent East Sea. However, the phase change from water vapor to ice cloud and further snowfall has little been examined in detail. Therefore, in this study, we investigated phase change of liquid water in terms of a quantitative budget as well as time lag of water vapor conversion to snowfall in the ESSAY (Experiment on Snow Storms At Yeongdong) campaign that had been carried out from 2012 to 2015. First, we classified 3 distinctive synoptic patterns such as Low Crossing, Low Passing, and Stagnation. In general, the amount of water vapor of Low Crossing is highest, and Low Passing, Stagnation in order. The snowfall intensity of Stagnation is highest, whereas that of Low Crossing is the lowest, when a sharp increase in water vapor and accordingly a following increase in precipitation are shown with the remarkable time lag. Interestingly, the conversion rate of water vapor to snowfall seems to be higher (about 10%) in case of the Stagnation type in comparison with the other types at Bukgangneung, which appears to be attributable to significant cooling caused by cold surge in the lower atmosphere. Although the snowfall is generally preceded by an increase in water vapor, its amount converted into the snowfall is also controlled by the atmosphere condition such as temperature, super-saturation, etc. These results would be a fundamental resource for an improvement of snowfall forecast in the Yeongdong region and the successful experiment of weather modification in the near future.

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.46 no.11
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• pp.1129-1140
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• 2013

Precipitation is one of the important factors in the hydrological cycle. It needs to understand accurate of spatial precipitation field because it has large spatio-temporal variability. Precipitation data obtained through the Tropical Rainfall Monitoring Mission (TRMM) 3B43 product is inaccurate because it has 25 km space scale. Downscaling of TRMM 3B43 product can increase the accuracy of spatial precipitation field from 25 km to 1 km scale. The relationship between precipitation and the normalized difference vegetation index(NDVI) (1 km space scale) which is obtained from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometers (MODIS) sensor loaded in Terra satellite is variable at different scales. Therefore regression equations were established and these equations apply to downscaling. Two renormalization strategies, Geographical Difference Analysis (GDA) and Geographical Ratio Analysis (GRA) are implemented for correcting the differences between remote sensing-derived and rain gauge data. As for considering the GDA method results, biases, the root mean-squared error (RMSE), MAE and Index of agreement (IOA) is equal to 4.26 mm, 172.16 mm, 141.95 mm, 0.64 in 2009 and 17.21 mm, 253.43 mm, 310.56 mm, 0.62 in 2011. In this study, we can see the 1km spatial precipitation field map over Korea. It will be possible to get more accurate spatial analysis of the precipitation field through using the additional rain gauges or radar data.