• Proceedings of the Korea Water Resources Association Conference
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• 2001.05a
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• pp.409-415
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• 2001

• Journal of The Korean Society of Agricultural Engineers
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• v.61 no.6
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• pp.55-65
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• 2019

Universal Soil Loss Equation (USLE) is to estimate potential soil loss and has benefit in use with its simplicity. The equation is composed of five factors, one of the factors is the slope length and steepness factor (LS factor) that is for topographic property of fields to estimate potential soil loss. Since the USLE was developed, many equations to compute LS was suggested with field measurement. Nowadays the factor is often computed in GIS software with digital elevation model, however it was reported that the factor is very sensitive to the resolution of digital elevation model. In addition, the digital elevation model of high resolution less than 3 meter is required in small field application, however these inputs are not associate with the empirical models' backgrounds since the empirical models were derived in 22.1 meter field measurements. In the study, four equation to compute LS factor and two approaches to determine slope length and steepness were examined, and correction factor was suggested to provide reasonable precision in LS estimations. The correction factor is computed with field area and cell size of digital elevation model, thus the correction factor can be adapted in any USLE-based models using LS factor at field level.

• Journal of Korean Society of Forest Science
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• v.83 no.3
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• pp.322-330
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• 1994

The Universal Soil Loss Equation (USLE) has been widely used to predict long-term soil loss by incorporating several erosion factors, such as rainfall, soil, topography, and vegetation. This study is aimed to introduce the LISLE within geographic information system(GIS) environment. The Kwangneung Experimental Forest located in Kyongki Province was selected for the study area. Initially, twelve years of hourly rainfall records that were collected from 1982 to 1993 were processed to obtain the rainfall factor(R) value for the LISLE calculation. Soil survey map and topographic map of the study area were digitized and subsequent input values(K, L, S factors) were derived. The cover type and management factor (C) values were obtained from the classification of Landsat Thematic Mapper(CM) satellite imagery. All these input values were geographically registered over a common map coordinate with $25{\times}25m^2$ ground resolution. The USLE was calculated for every grid location by selecting necessary input values from the digital base maps. Once the LISLE was calculated, the resultant soil loss values(A) were represented by both numerical values and map format. Using GIS to run the LISLE, it is possible to pent out the exact locations where soil loss potential is high. In addition, this approach can be a very effective tool to monitor possible soil loss hazard under the situations of forest changes, such as conversion of forest lands to other uses, forest road construction, timber harvesting, and forest damages caused by fire, insect, and diseases.

• 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 Environmental Agriculture
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.314-320
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• 2008

During the summer season, more than half of the annual precipitation in Korea occurs during the summer season due to the geographical location in the Asian monsoon belt. So, this causes severe soil erosion from croplands, which is directly linked to the deterioration of crop/land productivity and surface water quality. Therefore, much attention has been given to develop accurate estimation tools of soil erosion. The aim of this study is to assess the performance of using the empirical Universal Soil Loss Equation (USLE) and the physical-based model of the Water Erosion Prediction Project (WEPP) to quantify eroded amount of soil from agricultural fields. Input data files, including climate, soil, slope, and cropping management, were modified to fit into Korean conditions. Chuncheon (forest) and Jeonju (level-plain) were selected as two Korean cities with different topographic characteristics for model analysis. The results of this current study indicated that better soil erosion prediction can be achieved using the WEPP model since it has better power to illustrate a higher degree of spatial variability than USLE in topography, precipitation, soils, and crop management practices. These present findings are expected to contribute to the development of the environmental assessment program as well as the conservation of the agricultural environment in Korea.

• Journal of Soil and Groundwater Environment
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• v.24 no.5
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• pp.31-41
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• 2019

In 2013, the Ministry of Environment in South Korea promulgated a new regulatory bulletin that contained revised enforcement ordinance on soil management protocols. The bulletin recommends the use of Universal Soil Loss Equation (USLE) for the soil erosion estimation, but USLE has limited applicability in prediction of soil erosion because it does not allow direct estimation of actual mass of soil erosion. Therefore, there is a great need of revising the protocol to allow direct comparison between the measured and estimated values of soil erosion. The Korean Soil Loss Equation (KORSLE) was developed recently and used to estimate soil loss in two fields as an alternative to existing USLE model. KORSLE was applied to estimate monthly rainfall erosivity indices as well as temporal variation in potential soil loss. The estimated potential soil loss by KORSLE was adjusted with correction factor for direct comparison with measured soil erosion. The result was reasonable since Nash-Stucliff efficiency were 0.8020 in calibration and 0.5089 in validation. The results suggest that KORSLE is an appropriate model as an alternative to USLE to predict soil erosion at field scale.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Surveying, Geodesy, Photogrammetry and Cartography
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• v.34 no.5
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• pp.515-524
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• 2016

Damage such as landslides has been caused by natural phenomenon like a heavy rain. As appropriate countermeasures, rather than analysing the cause of the landslide, we used methods of check dam installation and maintenance mountain basin. A check dam is a small, sometimes temporary, dam constructed across a swale, drainage ditch, or waterway to counteract erosion by reducing water flow velocity. In this study, we analysed the adequacy of check dam built to prevent further damage after landslides through GIS and examined the sediment erosion in the existing check dams for an ideal location of check dam, considering the accessibility and size. As a result of reviewing soil loss in the study watershed according to RUSLE(Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation), the basin I had about 2% soil loss reduction, the basin II showed less than 1 % soul loss reduction, and basin III showed the reducing effect of 5 % soil erosion.

• Journal of Soil and Groundwater Environment
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• v.19 no.6
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• pp.30-36
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• 2014

The objective of this study is to estimate soil loss in the buffer zone of Guem river with future climate change simulation. Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation (RUSLE) model was used for the estimation of soil loss at the buffer zone of Guem river. As results of simulations, the area of the maximum soil loss potential was estimated as the Cheongsung-myeon Okchun-gun Chungcheongbuk-do. The soil losses were estimated to be 106.67 and 103.00 ton/ha/yr for the 2020 segi (2015-2025) and 2040 segi (2035-2045) in the Cheongsung-myeon area, respectively. Also, the estimated average values of soil losses in the Cheongsung-myeon with future climate change was 110.78 ton/ha/yr.

• Journal of The Korean Society of Agricultural Engineers
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• v.60 no.6
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• pp.13-20
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• 2018

Universal Soil Loss Equation (USLE) has been widely used to estimate potential soil loss because USLE is a simple and reliable method. The rainfall erosivity factor (R factor) explains rainfall characteristics. R factors, cited in the Bulletin on the Survey of the Erosion of Topsoil of the Ministry of Environment in the Republic of Korea, are too outdated to represent current rainfall patterns in the Republic of Korea. Rainfall datasets at one minute intervals from 2013 to 2017 were collected from fifty rainfall gauge stations to update R factors considering current rainfall condition. The updated R factors in this study were compared to the previous R factors which were calculated using the data from 1973 to 1996. The coefficient of determination between the updated and the previous R factors shows 0.374, which means the correlation is not significant. Therefore, it was concluded that the previous R factors might not explain current rainfall conditions. The other remarkable result was that regression equations using annual rainfall data might be inappropriate to estimate reasonable R factors because the correlation between annual rainfall and the R factors was generally unsatisfy.

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.33 no.5
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• pp.603-610
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• 2000

Climate factors such as rainfall, temperature, wind, humidity, and solar radiant heat affect soil erosion. Among those factors, rainfall influences soil erosion to the most extent. The kinetic energy of rainfall breaks away soil particles and the water flow caused by the rainfall entrains and transport them downstream. In order to estimate soil erosion, therefore, it is important to determine the rainfall erosivity. In this study, the annual average Rainfall Erosivity(R) in Korea, an important factor of the Universal Soil Loss Equation(USLE) and Revised Equation(RUSLE), has been estimated using the nationwide rainfall data from 1973 to 1996. For this estimation, hourly rainfall data at 53 meterological stations managed by the Meterological Agency was used. It has been found from this study that the newly computed values for R are slightly larger than the existing ones. It would be because this study is based on the range of rainfall data that is longer in period and denser in the number of gauging stations than what the existing result used. The final result of this study is shown in the form the isoerodent map of Korea.