• Journal of the Korean Institute of Landscape Architecture
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• v.40 no.5
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• pp.8-18
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• 2012

Urban nature plays an important role not only in the improvement of the physical environment but also from the perspective of psychological and social function. In particular, schoolyards as well as the green spaces near school surroundings function as a primary space for urban children to experience nature in Korea, as they spend most of their time at school. In this study, the status of urban green spaces near school surroundings was examined. For the analysis, 185 elementary schools in Seoul were selected and the green spaces within a radius of 300m(defined as 'school zone' in this study) were analyzed using the Rapid Eye multispectral satellite image data. The mean green space ratio of school zone accounts to about 21% with a high variation from 74% to 0.7% and more than half of the school zone have a green space ratio of less than 20%. Schools with a high green space ratio in their school zone are mostly located near urban forests, so forest areas particularly contribute to increase the green space ratio. Furthermore, forest vegetation shows relatively higher vitality than other green spaces located in urbanized areas. In contrast, schools with a low green space ratio in their school zone are mostly situated in high-density residential areas and the green spaces show relatively low vegetation vitality. Except for the urban forest, the majority of urban green spaces in urbanized areas are landscape green facilities in apartment districts. The other types of urban open spaces such as environmentally shaped schoolyards or street parks account only for a very small proportion of school surroundings. Therefore, it is needed to establish countermeasures in the context of urban planning; e.g. to promote the school forest projects preferentially by selecting schools with a extremely low green space ratio in their school zone, to foster roof greening in near surroundings, and to connect schoolyards organically with nearby apartment landscape green facilities as an easily accessible urban open space.

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.53 no.10
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• pp.845-859
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• 2020

Climate change and recent heat waves have drawn public attention toward other environmental issues, such as water pollution in the form of algal blooms, chemical leaks, and oil spills. Water pollution by the leakage of chemicals may severely affect human health as well as contaminate the air, water, and soil and cause discoloration or death of crops that come in contact with these chemicals. Chemicals that may spill into water streams are often colorless and water-soluble, which makes it difficult to determine whether the water is polluted using the naked eye. When a chemical spill occurs, it is usually detected through a simple contact detection device by installing sensors at locations where leakage is likely to occur. The drawback with the approach using contact detection sensors is that it relies heavily on the skill of field workers. Moreover, these sensors are installed at a limited number of locations, so spill detection is not possible in areas where they are not installed. Recently hyperspectral images have been used to identify land cover and vegetation and to determine water quality by analyzing the inherent spectral characteristics of these materials. While hyperspectral sensors can potentially be used to detect chemical substances, there is currently a lack of research on the detection of chemicals in water streams using hyperspectral sensors. Therefore, this study utilized remote sensing techniques and the latest sensor technology to overcome the limitations of contact detection technology in detecting the leakage of hazardous chemical into aquatic systems. In this study, we aimed to determine whether 18 types of hazardous chemicals could be individually classified using hyperspectral image. To this end, we obtained hyperspectral images of each chemical to establish a spectral library. We expect that future studies will expand the spectral library database for hazardous chemicals and that verification of its application in water streams will be conducted so that it can be applied to real-time monitoring to facilitate rapid detection and response when a chemical spill has occurred.