• Korean Journal of Environmental Biology
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• v.36 no.3
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• pp.424-437
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• 2018

The incidence of freshwater algal bloom has been increasing globally in recent years and poses a major threat to environmental health. Cyanobacteria are the major component of the bloom forming community that must be monitored frequently. Their morphological identities, however, have remained elusive, due to their small size in cells and morphological resemblances among species. We have analyzed molecular diversity and seasonal changes of cyanobacteria in Paldang Reservoir, Korea, using morphological and 16S rRNA pyrosequencing methods. Samples were collected at monthly intervals from the reservoir March-December 2012. In total, 40 phylotypes of cyanobacteria were identified after comparing 49,131 pyrosequence reads. Cyanobacterial genera such as Anabaena, Aphanizomenon, Microcystis and Synechocystis were predominantly present in samples. However, the majority of cyanobacterial sequences (65.9%) identified in this study were of uncultured origins, not detected morphologically. Relative abundance of cyanobacterial sequences was observed as high in August, with no occurrence in March and December. These results suggested that pyrosequencing approach may reveal cyanobacterial diversity undetected morphologically, and may be used as reference for studying and monitoring cyanobacterial communities in aquatic environments.

• Ocean and Polar Research
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• v.45 no.3
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• pp.113-123
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• 2023

Humic substances are refractory organic compounds that are relatively low in biological activity but known to stimulate phytoplankton growth in estuarine and marine environments. The effect of humic substances on phytoplankton growth was investigated in the seawater zone of the Yeongsan River estuary where an episodic anthropogenic freshwater is discharged, affecting its water properties directly. Water samples and data of water properties were collected at three stations (Sts. A-C) along the channel of the seawater zone in February, May, August and November, 2009. The collected water samples were incubated after humic acids (HA) were added in mesocosm experiments. Phytoplankton (chlorophyll-a) were fractionated into net- (> 20 ㎛) and nano-size (< 20 ㎛) to examine the response of phytoplankton according to size. Their response to HA treatment was assessed by repeated measures analysis of variance (RM-ANOVA). The experiments showed that phytoplankton biomass (chlorophyll-a) significantly increased after HA were added at the stations near the sea dike. Especially, nano-sized chlorophyll-a concentrations increased significantly throughout the seasons. This indicates that understanding the behavior of refractory organic matters such as humic substances is required to better manage altered estuarine ecosystems including the Yeongsan River estuary which are affected by episodic discharge of freshwater from sea dikes.

• Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.54-61
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• 2018

Biodiesel production parameters and the impact analysis of the potential emissions from both soybean biodiesel and washing water stored in three different environmental conditions were investigated. The effects of the reaction temperature, methanol/oil mole ratio and catalyst concentration on biodiesel yield were considered. And the results showed optimum biodiesel yield of 99% obtained at $54^{\circ}C$, 7 methanol/oil mole ratio and 0.4 wt/wt % catalyst concentration. The potential emissions from both the biodiesel produced and washing water stored (for six weeks) in refrigerator (${\leq}10^{\circ}C$), vacuum (50 kPa) and direct exposure to atmosphere were identified and quantified. Impact analysis of the emissions involved their categorization into: terrestrial acidification, freshwater eutrophication, human toxicity, terrestrial ecotoxicity, climate change and freshwater ecotoxicity. Freshwater ecotoxicity category had the most pronounced negative impact of the potential emissions with $5.237710^{-2}kg\;1,4-DB\;eq$. emissions in Atmosphere, $4.702610^{-2}kg\;1,4-DB\;eq$. emissions in Refrigerator and $3.966110^{-2}kg\;1,4-DB\;eq$. emissions in Vacuum. Climate change had the least effect of the emissions with $6.214106^{-6}kg\;CO_2\;eq$. in Atmosphere, $3.9310^{-6}kg\;CO_2\;eq$. in Refrigerator and $1.6710^{-6}kg\;CO_2\;eq$. in Vacuum. The study showed that the order of preference of the storage environments of biodiesel is vacuum environment, refrigerated condition and exposure to atmosphere.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.24 no.10
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• pp.1308-1318
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• 2014

The specific freshwater environment of reservoirs formed by streams has not been well studied. In this paper, the bacterioplankton community in such a reservoir, the Huangqian Reservoir in eastern China, was described using culture-independent molecular methods. We found that the most dominant bacterioplankton were affiliated with Cyanobacteria, followed by Betaproteobacteria, Bacteroidetes, Gammaproteobacteria, and Actinobacteria. Both bacterial abundance and diversity increased along the direction of water flow, and the 16S rRNA gene copy number in the water outlet was nearly an order of magnitude higher than that in the water inlet. Pearson correlation analyses indicated that nitrate had a significantly negative correlation with the bacterial abundance (p < 0.05) and that ammonium was positively correlated with bacterial abundance (p < 0.05). Interestingly, owing to a remarkably negative correlation (p < 0.01), the ratio of nitrate and ammonium might serve as a good pre dictor of the relative abundance of bacterioplankton. According to redundancy analysis, nitrate and dissolved oxygen were the major factors influencing the bacterial communities. In addition, we attempted to determine the reasons why such a reservoir could maintain good ecological balance for a period of decades, and we found that the environmental factors and bacterial communities both played critical roles. This research will benefit our understanding of bacterial communities and their surrounding environments in freshwater ecosystems.

• Environmental Analysis Health and Toxicology
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.223-228
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• 2010

Neocaridina denticulata is a small freshwater shrimp indigenous to Korea. As an indigenous species has long-adapted to particular water environments, the species can be a suitable indicator to assess environmental risks caused by hazard chemicals in the particular site. Thus Neocaridina denticulata, a small freshwater shrimp indigenous to Korea, is worth considering for a test species for such purpose. N. denticulata were exposed to pentachlorophenol sodium salt, sodium azide and potassium dichromate using automatic flow-through system for 96 hours. The 96 hr lethal concentrations ($LC_{50}$) of these chemicals were calculated as $0.53{\pm}0.09\;mg/L$, $2.40{\pm}0.61\;mg/L$ and $1.21{\pm}0.09\;mg/L$ respectively and showed relatively small deviation from repetitive test results. When compared with the toxicity values of other species for each chemical, N. denticulata had moderate or high sensitivity to the toxicity of these chemicals. It can be concluded that N. denticulata is a good test species to evaluate acute toxicity of various hazardous chemicals.

• Korean Journal of Microbiology
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• v.53 no.4
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• pp.320-322
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• 2017

A betaproteobacterium strain GR16-43 was isolated from a surface layer of the Geomnyong Pond in Republic of Korea by a dilution-to-extinction culturing method. We report the whole genome sequence of the strain GR16-43, which contains 4,806,848 bp with a G + C content 67.12%, and to include 4,424 protein-coding genes and 47 transfer RNA genes. The genome was determined to contain the genes encoding carbon monoxide dehydrogenase, nitrate reductase, nitrite reductase, nitric oxide reductase, and the sulfur oxidation (sox) gene cluster, highlighting the potential importance of the bacterial group represented by the strain in the cycling of inorganic elements. These results indicate that strain GR16-43 genome showed several traits indicating adaptation of the bacteria to living in freshwater environments.

• Korean Journal of Ecology and Environment
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• v.51 no.1
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• pp.40-59
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• 2018

This review summarizes the history of freshwater zooplankton research in Korean Society of Limnology and necessary future topics that are remain poorly investigated in South Korea based on main research topics of published articles focusing on lakes, reservoirs, rivers and wetland ecosystems. In Korea, a total 450 freshwater zooplankton species have been reported (85 species of cladocera, ca. 230 species of rotifera since 1939, and 138 species of copepoda), and they cover 10% of total zooplankton species list. In the present paper, we provide recent species list of zooplankton found in Korea and their taxonomic keys. Over periods of 45 years, there are 25 published papers for zooplankton biota in lentic ecosystems in Korean Journal of Ecology and Environment (KJEE). The ecology of zooplankton communities in rivers has focused on the mechanisms involved in regulating their abundance, diversity and spatio-temporal patterns of genus Bosmina and rotifers (genus Brachionus and Keratella) that are most frequently found from Korea. On the other hand, the studies on zooplankton in wetland has focused on Alona, Chydorus and Ceriodaphnia with special emphasis on their relationships with aquatic macrophytes. Even though studies on the freshwater ecosystem in Korea have a long history, a few of studies on zooplankton biota were conducted at rice paddy, Dumbeong and wetlands. During the last two decades, experimental advances in freshwater zooplankton ecology and understanding of structure and function of this biota were made from a series of articles mainly in journal of KJEE. For future studies, quantitative, experimental and interdisciplinary approaches would be key words to understand zooplankton ecology and their roles in aquatic ecosystems under changing environments, and we have suggested necessary zooplankton research fields and future directions.

• Korean Journal of Environmental Biology
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• v.38 no.2
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• pp.254-270
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• 2020

We conducted a seasonal field survey to analyze the distribution patterns of a phytoplankton community and biological oceanographic characteristics in the Geum river estuary in 2018. The results showed that the phytoplankton community consisted of 58 genera and 116 species, showing a relatively simple distribution. It was controlled by diatoms at 70.2%, a low number of species in winter and spring, and a high number in summer and autumn. The phytoplankton cell density ranged from 10.0 to 2,904.0 cells mL^-1, with an average layer of 577.2 cells mL^-1, which was low in autumn and high in winter. The seasonal succession of phytoplankton dominant species was mainly centric diatoms from winter to summer, including Thalassiosira nordenskioeldii, Cerataulina bergonii, and Skeletonema costatum-ls in winter, S. costatum-ls and C. bergonii in spring, and Eucampia zodiacus and Th. nordenskioeldii in summer. However, the autumn species depended upon the regions, with the inner bay dominated by the centric diatom, Aulacoseira cf. granulata, the mixed areas by S. costatum-ls, and the open sea by the dinoflagellate, Lingulodinium polyedra. According to principal component analysis (PCA), the phytoplankton community was greatly affected by the inflow and expansion of freshwater, including high nutrients, which are introduced annually through the rivermouth weir in Geum river estuary. However, the estuary, which is strongly affected by annual freshwater, was limited to areas near Geumran Island, which is adjacent to the river-mouth weir.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.17 no.6
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• pp.897-904
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• 2007

The aim of this paper is to discuss the methodology of our investigation of the dynamics of protein degradation and the total in situ protealytic activity in meso/eutrophic, eutrophic, and hypereutrophic freshwater environments. Analysis of the kinetics and rates of enzymatic release of amino acids in water samples preserved with sodium azide allows determination of the concentrations of labile proteins $(C_{LAB})$, and their half-life time $(T_{1/2})$. Moreover, it gives more realistic information on resultant activity in situ $(V_{T1/2})$ of ecto- and extracellular proteases that are responsible for the biological degradation of these compounds. Although the results provided by the proposed method are general y well correlated with those obtained by classical procedures, they better characterize the dynamics of protein degradation processes, especially in eutrophic or hypereutrophic lakes. In these environments, processes of protein decomposition occur mainly on the particles and depend primarily on a metabolic activity of seston-attached bacteria. The method was tested in three lakes. The different degree of eutrophication of these lakes was clearly demonstrated by the measured real proteolytic pattern and confirmed by conventional trophic state determinants.

• Proceedings of the Korean Geotechical Society Conference
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• 2006.03a
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• pp.882-887
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• 2006

Sedimentological, geochemical, geophysical and micropaleontological analyses of 10 borehole cores were carried out to understand depositional environment and sequence stratigraphy of late Quaternary sedimentation in the estuary of the Nakdong River. Holocene Formation in study area is classified into five sedimentary units. Early Holocene freshwater lower pebbly sandy deposit(Unit I), lower muddy deposit(Unit II), middle thin sandy deposit(Unit III), upper muddy deposit(Unit VI), and upper sandy deposit(Unit V), in ascending order contolled by global sea-level change since interglacial period(about 15,000 yrs B.P.). Unit I deposited in erosional environments before marine trangression. Unit II and Unit VI composed of clay were deposited in cold and worm currents for marine trangression., respectively.