• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
• /
• v.32 no.4
• /
• pp.457-467
• /
• 1999

No complete methods for estimating soil loss, included by rain storms, from a small watershed are available yet, and the best recommended method is to use measured data from the watershed. When no measured data is available from the watershed, empirical models for estimating the soil loss, such as the Universal Soil Loss Equation(USLE), is well recommended in practice. For using this equation, it is necessary to estimated the rainfall erosivity, commonly expressed as R, of the watershed. In this study, first we collected data of the probable rainfalls with the return periods of 2, 5, 10, 20, 30, 50, 80, 100, 200, and 500-yr and with the duration hours of 0.5, 1, 2, 3, 6, 12, and 24-hr. Using this data, we calculated the design values for R for the return period of 24-hr at each major rainfall-measuring station nationwide. Then we constructed the iso-erodent map of Korea for each return period of the 24-hr design storm. This study shows that the 24-hr duration iso-erodent map of the 5-yr return period is very similar to the annual average iso-erodent map of Korea. This study also shows that the 24-hr duration R-values of a certain return period can be estimated by multiplying certain parameters, obtained from this study, to the 24-hr duration R-values for the 5-yr return period or the annual average R-values. Finally, the R-values of the design storm with the 24-hr return period obtained from this study can be used for designing the settling basins at small watersheds.

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
• /
• v.51 no.9
• /
• pp.783-793
• /
• 2018

The purpose of this study to present updated regional annual mean rainfall erosivity data in the Republic of Korea. In 2012, Ministry of Environment in Korea published the notice about investigation and survey procedure for the amount of topsoil erosion and adopted USLE (Universal Soil Loss Equation) model to predict the amount of national-scale soil erosion in Korea. In the notice, regional rainfall erosivity values for 158 sites, which is essential to apply the USLE, were included, however, these values came from the data made before 1997 and need to be updated. This study collected, classified and combined annual mean rainfall erosivity data from the literature review to analyze the data. We presented that new iso-erodent map, interpolated by IDW (Inverse Distance Weighted) method and extracted updated regional annual mean rainfall erosivity data at 167 regions for 1961~2015. These values will be used as updated rainfall erosivity data to predict the amount of topsoil erosion in Korea.