• Korean Journal of Soil Science and Fertilizer
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• v.50 no.5
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• pp.422-433
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• 2017

Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) has several advantages over conventional remote sensing techniques. They can acquire high-resolution images quickly and repeatedly. And with a comparatively lower flight altitude, they can obtain good quality images even in cloudy weather. In this paper, we developed for estimating garlic growth at field scale model in major cultivation regions. We used the $NDVI_{UAV}$ that reflects the crop conditions, and seven meteorological elements for 3 major cultivation regions from 2015 to 2017. For this study, UAV imagery was taken at Taean, Changnyeong, and Hapcheon regions nine times from early February to late June during the garlic growing season. Four plant growth parameters, plant height (P.H.), leaf number (L.N.), plant diameter (P.D.), and fresh weight (F.W.) were measured for twenty plants per plot for each field campaign. The multiple linear regression models were suggested by using backward elimination and stepwise selection in the extraction of independent variables. As a result, model of cold type explain 82.1%, 65.9%, 64.5%, and 61.7% of the P.H., F.W., L.N., P.D. with a root mean square error (RMSE) of 7.98 cm, 5.91 g, 1.05, and 3.43 cm. Especially, model of warm type explain 92.9%, 88.6%, 62.8%, 54.6% of the P.H., P.D., L.N., F.W. with a root mean square error (RMSE) of 16.41 cm, 9.08 cm, 1.12, 19.51 g. The spatial distribution map of garlic growth was in strong agreement with the field measurements in terms of field variation and relative numerical values when $NDVI_{UAV}$ was applied to multiple linear regression models. These results will also be useful for determining the UAV multi-spectral imagery necessary to estimate growth parameters of garlic.

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.54 no.8
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• pp.553-566
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• 2021

River confluence is often characterized by shear layer and the associated strong mixing. In natural rivers, the main channel and its tributary can be separated by the shear layer using contrasting colors. The shear layer can be easily observed using aerial images from satellite or unmanned aerial vehicles. This study proposes a low-cost identification method extracting geographic features of the shear layer using RGB aerial image. The method consists of three stages. At first, in order to identify the shear layer, it performs image segmentation using a Gaussian mixture model and extracts the water bodies of the main channel and tributary. Next, the self-organizing map simplifies the flow line of the water bodies into the 1-dimensional curve grid. After that, the curvilinear coordinate transformation is performed using the water body pixels and the curve grid. As a result, the shear layer identification method was successfully applied to the confluence between Nakdong River and Nam River to extract geometric shear layer features (confluence angle, upstream- and downstream- channel widths, shear layer length, maximum shear layer thickness).

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.56 no.spc1
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• pp.1027-1036
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• 2023

Coastal topographic information is crucial in coastal management, but point measurment based approeaches, which are labor intensive, are generally applied to land and underwater, separately. This study introduces an efficient method enabling land and undetwater surveys using an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). This method involves applying two different algorithms to measure the topography on land and water depth, respectively, using UAV imagery and merge them to reconstruct whole coastal digital elevation model. Acquisition of the landside terrain is achieved using the Structure-from-Motion Multi-View Stereo technique with spatial scan imagery. Independently, underwater bathymetry is retrieved by employing a depth inversion technique with a drone-acquired wave field video. After merging the two digital elevation models into a local coordinate, interpolation is performed for areas where terrain measurement is not feasible, ultimately obtaining a continuous nearshore terrain. We applied the proposed survey technique to Jangsa Beach, South Korea, and verified that detailed terrain characteristics, such as berm, can be measured. The proposed UAV-based survey method has significant efficiency in terms of time, cost, and safety compared to existing methods.

• Korean Journal of Environmental Agriculture
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.120-132
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• 2008

Remotely sensed images from a satellite can be applied for detecting and quantifying spatial and temporal variations in terms of landuse & landcover, crop growth, and disaster for agricultural applications. The purposes of this study were to analyze topography using DEM(digital elevation model) and classify landuse & landcover into 10 classes-paddy field, dry field, forest, bare land, grass & bush, water body, reclaimed land, salt farm, residence & building, and others-using Landsat TM images in North Korea. Elevation was greater than 1,000 meters in the eastern part of North Korea around Ranggang-do where Kaemagowon was located. Pyeongnam and Hwangnam in the western part of North Korea were low in elevation. Topography of North Korea showed typical 'east-high and west-low' landform characteristics. Landcover classification of North Korea using spectral reflectance of multi-temporal Landsat TM images was performed and the statistics of each landcover by administrative district, slope, and agroclimatic zone were calculated in terms of area. Forest areas accounted for 69.6 percent of the whole area while the areas of dry fields and paddy fields were 15.7 percent and 4.2 percent, respectively. Bare land and water body occupied 6.6 percent and 1.6 percent, respectively. Residence & building reached less than 1 percent of the country. Paddy field areas concentrated in the A slope ranged from 0 to 2 percent(greater than 80 percent). The dry field areas were shown in the A slope the most, followed by D, E, C, B, and F slopes. According to the statistics by agroclimatic zone, paddy and dry fields were mainly distributed in the North plain region(N-6) and North western coastal region(N-7). Forest areas were evenly distributed all over the agroclimatic regions. Periodic landcover analysis of North Korea based on remote sensing technique using satellite imagery can produce spatial and temporal statistics information for future landuse management and planning of North Korea.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.29 no.5
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• pp.517-525
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• 2013

Time-series data of Normal Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) obtained by the Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer(MODIS) satellite imagery gives a waveform that reveals the characteristics of the phenology. The waveform can be decomposed into harmonics of various periods by the Fourier transformation. The resulting $n^{th}$ harmonics represent the amount of NDVI change in a period of a year divided by n. The values of each harmonics or their relative relation have been used to classify the vegetation species and to build a vegetation map. Here, we propose a method to estimate the annual amount of carbon absorbed on the forest from the $1^{st}$ harmonic NDVI value. The $1^{st}$ harmonic value represents the amount of growth of the leaves. By the allometric equation of trees, the growth of leaves can be considered to be proportional to the total amount of carbon absorption. We compared the $1^{st}$ harmonic NDVI values of the 6220 sample points with the reference data of the carbon absorption obtained by the field survey in the forest of South Korea. The $1^{st}$ harmonic values were roughly proportional to the amount of carbon absorption irrespective of the species and ages of the vegetation. The resulting proportionality constant between the carbon absorption and the $1^{st}$ harmonic value was 236 tCO2/5.29ha/year. The total amount of carbon dioxide absorption in the forest of South Korea over the last ten years has been estimated to be about 56 million ton, and this coincides with the previous reports obtained by other methods. Considering that the amount of the carbon absorption becomes a kind of currency like carbon credit, our method is very useful due to its generality.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.36 no.5_2
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• pp.989-1006
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• 2020

Building change monitoring based on building detection is one of the most important fields in terms of monitoring artificial structures using high-resolution multi-temporal images such as CAS500-1 and 2, which are scheduled to be launched. However, not only the various shapes and sizes of buildings located on the surface of the Earth, but also the shadows or trees around them make it difficult to detect the buildings accurately. Also, a large number of misdetection are caused by relief displacement according to the azimuth and elevation angles of the platform. In this study, object-based building detection was performed using the azimuth angle of the Sun and the corresponding main direction of shadows to improve the results of building change detection. After that, the platform's azimuth and elevation angles were used to detect changed buildings. The object-based segmentation was performed on a high-resolution imagery, and then shadow objects were classified through the shadow intensity, and feature information such as rectangular fit, Gray-Level Co-occurrence Matrix (GLCM) homogeneity and area of each object were calculated for building candidate detection. Then, the final buildings were detected using the direction and distance relationship between the center of building candidate object and its shadow according to the azimuth angle of the Sun. A total of three methods were proposed for the building change detection between building objects detected in each image: simple overlay between objects, comparison of the object sizes according to the elevation angle of the platform, and consideration of direction between objects according to the azimuth angle of the platform. In this study, residential area was selected as study area using high-resolution imagery acquired from KOMPSAT-3 and Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV). Experimental results have shown that F1-scores of building detection results detected using feature information were 0.488 and 0.696 respectively in KOMPSAT-3 image and UAV image, whereas F1-scores of building detection results considering shadows were 0.876 and 0.867, respectively, indicating that the accuracy of building detection method considering shadows is higher. Also among the three proposed building change detection methods, the F1-score of the consideration of direction between objects according to the azimuth angles was the highest at 0.891.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.31 no.5
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• pp.449-459
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• 2015

The conventional National Forest Inventory(NFI)-based forest carbon stock estimation method is suitable for national-scale estimation, but is not for regional-scale estimation due to the lack of NFI plots. In this study, for the purpose of regional-scale carbon stock estimation, we created grid-based forest carbon stock maps using spatial ancillary data and two types of up-scaling methods. Chungnam province was chosen to represent the study area and for which the $5^{th}$ NFI (2006~2009) data was collected. The first method (method 1) selects forest type map as ancillary data and uses regression model for forest carbon stock estimation, whereas the second method (method 2) uses satellite imagery and k-Nearest Neighbor(k-NN) algorithm. Additionally, in order to consider uncertainty effects, the final AGB carbon stock maps were generated by performing 200 iterative processes with Monte Carlo simulation. As a result, compared to the NFI-based estimation(21,136,911 tonC), the total carbon stock was over-estimated by method 1(22,948,151 tonC), but was under-estimated by method 2(19,750,315 tonC). In the paired T-test with 186 independent data, the average carbon stock estimation by the NFI-based method was statistically different from method2(p<0.01), but was not different from method1(p>0.01). In particular, by means of Monte Carlo simulation, it was found that the smoothing effect of k-NN algorithm and mis-registration error between NFI plots and satellite image can lead to large uncertainty in carbon stock estimation. Although method 1 was found suitable for carbon stock estimation of forest stands that feature heterogeneous trees in Korea, satellite-based method is still in demand to provide periodic estimates of un-investigated, large forest area. In these respects, future work will focus on spatial and temporal extent of study area and robust carbon stock estimation with various satellite images and estimation methods.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.37 no.6_1
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• pp.1757-1766
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• 2021

The green coverage ratio is the ratio of the land area to green coverage area, and it is used as a practical urban greening index. The green coverage ratio is calculated based on the land cover map, but low spatial resolution and inconsistent production cycle of land cover map make it difficult to calculate the correct green coverage area and analyze the precise green coverage. Therefore, this study proposes a new method to calculate green coverage area using aerial images and deep neural networks. Green coverage ratio can be quickly calculated using manned aerial images acquired by local governments, but precise analysis is difficult because components of image such as acquisition date, resolution, and sensors cannot be selected and modified. This limitation can be supplemented by using an unmanned aerial vehicle that can mount various sensors and acquire high-resolution images due to low-altitude flight. In this study, we proposed a method to calculate green coverage ratio from manned or unmanned aerial images, and experimentally verified the proposed method. Aerial images enable precise analysis by high resolution and relatively constant cycles, and deep learning can automatically detect green coverage area in aerial images. Local governments acquire manned aerial images for various purposes every year and we can utilize them to calculate green coverage ratio quickly. However, acquired manned aerial images may be difficult to accurately analyze because details such as acquisition date, resolution, and sensors cannot be selected. These limitations can be supplemented by using unmanned aerial vehicles that can mount various sensors and acquire high-resolution images due to low-altitude flight. Accordingly, the green coverage ratio was calculated from the two aerial images, and as a result, it could be calculated with high accuracy from all green types. However, the green coverage ratio calculated from manned aerial images had limitations in complex environments. The unmanned aerial images used to compensate for this were able to calculate a high accuracy of green coverage ratio even in complex environments, and more precise green area detection was possible through additional band images. In the future, it is expected that the rust rate can be calculated effectively by using the newly acquired unmanned aerial imagery supplementary to the existing manned aerial imagery.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.40 no.4
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• pp.363-375
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• 2024

Waterbody change detection using satellite images has recently been carried out in various regions in South Korea, utilizing multiple types of sensors. This study utilizes optical satellite images from Landsat and Sentinel-2 based on Google Earth Engine (GEE) to analyze long-term surface water area changes in four monitored small and medium-sized water supply dams and agricultural reservoirs in South Korea. The analysis covers 19 years for the water supply dams and 27 years for the agricultural reservoirs. By employing image analysis methods such as normalized difference water index, Canny Edge Detection, and Otsu'sthresholding for waterbody detection, the study reliably extracted water surface areas, allowing for clear annual changes in waterbodies to be observed. When comparing the time series data of surface water areas derived from satellite images to actual measured water levels, a high correlation coefficient above 0.8 was found for the water supply dams. However, the agricultural reservoirs showed a lower correlation, between 0.5 and 0.7, attributed to the characteristics of agricultural reservoir management and the inadequacy of comparative data rather than the satellite image analysis itself. The analysis also revealed several inconsistencies in the results for smaller reservoirs, indicating the need for further studies on these reservoirs. The changes in surface water area, calculated using GEE, provide valuable spatial information on waterbody changes across the entire watershed, which cannot be identified solely by measuring water levels. This highlights the usefulness of efficiently processing extensive long-term satellite imagery data. Based on these findings, it is expected that future research could apply this method to a larger number of dam reservoirs with varying sizes,shapes, and monitoring statuses, potentially yielding additional insights into different reservoir groups.

• Journal of the Korean Association of Geographic Information Studies
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.158-167
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• 2006

The object of this study is to detect of land-cover change in western DMZ and vicinity. This was performed as a basic study to construct a decision support system for the conservation or a sustainable development of the DMZ and Vicinity near future. DMZ is an is 4km wide and 250km long and it's one of the most highly fortified boundaries in the world and also a unique thin green line. Environmentalists want to declare the DMZ as a natural reserve and a biodiversity zone, but nowadays through the strengthening of the inter-Korean economic cooperation, some developers are trying to construct a new-town or an industrial complex inside of the DMZ. This study investigates the current environmental conditions, especially deforestation of the western DMZ adopting remote sensing and GIS techniques. The Land-covers were identified through the linear spectvral mixture analysis(LSMA) which was used to handle the spectral mixture problem of low spatial resolution imagery of Landsat TM and ETM+ imagery. To analyze quantitative and spatial change of vegetation-cover in western DMZ, GIS overlay method was used. In LSMA, to develop high-quality fraction images, three endmembers of green vegetation(GV), soil, water were driven from pure features in the imagery. Through 15 years, from 1987 to 2002, forest of western DMZ and vicinity was devastated and changed to urban, farmland or barren land. Northern part of western DMZ and vicinity was more deforested than that of southern part. ($52.37km^2$ of North Korean forest and $39.04km^2$ of South Korean were change to other land-covers.) In case of North Korean part, forest changed to barren land and farmland and in South Korean part, forest changed to farmland and urban area. Especially, In North Korean part of DMZ and vicinity, $56.15km^2$ of farmland changed to barren land through 15 years, which showed the failure of the 'Darakbat' (terrace filed) project which is one of food increase projects in North Korea.