• Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.519-533
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• 2003

The U.S. Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) resulted in the conversion of approximately 14.8 million ha(36.5 million acres) of cropland to grassland, woodland, and other conservation uses throughout the U.S. between 1986 and 1992. One of the major results of CRP has been the addition of millions of hectares of potential wildlife habitat. primarily as grassland. In this study, we examined regional changes in landscape structure caused by the introduction of CRP. Utilizing multi-seasonal Landsat Thematic Mapper imagery, we produced maps of cropland and grassland for the pre- and post- CRP enrollment periods for a six-county region in southwest Kansas. We then applied post-classification differencing to identify regions of cropland that had been converted to CRP. Using the FRAGSTATS spatial pattern analysis program, we calculated a variety of spatial statistics to analyze changes in landscape structure due to CRP. The major impact of CRP in the six-county study area has been the reversal of an overall trend of grassland habitat fragmentation. From the standpoint of potential wildlife habitat, the introduction of CRP has greatly increased the number of patches, mean patch size, and the interior or core area of grassland patches. In addition, CRP has increased connectivity and aggregation between grassland patches, potentially important factors for species of conservation interest, particularly those that require larger expanses of unbroken habitat. Finally, the distance between neighboring patches of grassland has decreased, reducing travel distance between patches. Clearly, the introduction of CRP has substantially modified the spatial structure of the southwest Kansas landscape, with important implications for wildlife habitat.

• KEPCO Journal on Electric Power and Energy
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.39-46
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• 2015

A outdoor termination installed at the outdoor substation is required to connect undergroud cables and overhead transmission lines. The joint box for AC transmission system is already developed and widely used to interconnect overhead and undergroud systems. But the development of the joint box for DC transmission system was only introduced from China and Japan, but theire developemnt staus and core technologies were not fully reported. In order to implement HVDC systems connecting ovehead transmission lines and undergroud cables, a outdoor termination should be developed, but the detailed specifications and information of this device were not reported. It is estimated that the development of the joint box for DC environment has some technical obstacles including insulating materials, electric field mitigation, thermal temperature rise, and space charge accumuations. Among this, the most important one is the DC elctrical insualtion design. Therefore, in order to investigate the DC elctrical insualton design of outdoor termination, the design of AC slip-on type outdoor termination is reffered, and DC electric field analysis performed to verify the possiblity of application of AC joint box into DC joint box. Especially for DC electric field analysis, temperature rise of insualting materials of a joint box was considered, because the conductivity of materials could be changed due to temperature rise. Furthermore, DC electric field analysis considering transinet state, and polarity reversal state were also investigated to verify which state is the most severe condition for the DC joint box. From the simualtion resulsts, it was shown that the value and the position of maximum electric field was obtained comparing AC state, DC state without temperaure rise, and DC state with temperaure rise. And it was confimred that severe DC electric field was observed considing temperaure rise. Finally, in order to reduce DC eletric field intensifation, different configuration of the joint box was applied and it was not possible to obtain satisfactory results. It means that the slight change of configuration of AC joint box was not the suitable soluton for DC joint box. It is essential to establish novel DC insulaton design skills and method for DC joint box to commercialze this product in the near future.