• Journal of The Korean Society of Agricultural Engineers
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• v.46 no.1
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• pp.87-97
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• 2004

The paper presents the results from the applications of the Water Erosion Prediction Project (WEPP) model to a single plot, and also a small watershed in the Mid Korean Peninsula which is comprised of hillslopes and channels along the water courses. Field monitoring was carried out to obtain total runoff, peak runoff and sediment yield data from research sites. For the plot of 0.63 ha in size, cultivated with com, the relative error of the simulated total runoff, peak runoff rates, and sediment yields using WEPP ranged from -16.6 to 22％, from -15.6 to 6.0％, and from 23.9 to 356.4％ compared to the observed data, respectively. The relative errors for the upland watershed of 5.1 ha ranged from -0.7 to 11.1 ％ for the total runoff, from -6.6 to 35.0 ％ for the sediment yields. The simulation results seem to justify that WEPP is applicable to the Korean dry croplands if the parameters are correctly defined. The results from WEPP applications showed that the major source areas contributing sediment yield most are downstream parts of the watershed where runoff concentrated. It was suggested that cultural practice be managed in such a way that the soil surface could be fully covered by crop during rainy season to minimize sediment yield. And also, best management practices were recommended based on WEPP simulations.

• Proceedings of the Korea Water Resources Association Conference
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• 2008.05a
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• pp.194-198
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• 2008

Significant soil erosion and water quality degradation issues are occurring at highland agricultural areas of Kangwon province because of agronomic and topographical specialities of the region. Thus spatial and temporal modeling techniques are often utilized to analyze soil erosion and sediment behaviors at watershed scale. The Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model is one of the watershed scale models that have been widely used for these ends in Korea. In most cases, the SWAT users tend to use the readily available input dataset, such as the Ministry of Environment (MOE) land cover data ignoring temporal and spatial changes in land cover. Spatial and temporal resolutions of the MOE land cover data are not good enough to reflect field condition for accurate assesment of soil erosion and sediment behaviors. Especially accelerated soil erosion is occurring from agricultural fields, which is sometimes not possible to identify with low-resolution MOD land cover data. Thus new land cover data is prepared with cadastral map and high spatial resolution images of the Doam-dam watershed. The SWAT model was calibrated and validated with this land cover data. The EI values were 0.79 and 0.85 for streamflow calibration and validation, respectively. The EI were 0.79 and 0.86 for sediment calibration and validation, respectively. These EI values were greater than those with MOE land cover data. With newly prepared land cover dataset for the Doam-dam watershed, the SWAT model better predicts hydrologic and sediment behaviors. The number of HRUs with new land cover data increased by 70.2% compared with that with the MOE land cover, indicating better representation of small-sized agricultural field boundaries. The SWAT estimated annual average sediment yield with the MOE land cover data was 61.8 ton/ha/year for the Doam-dam watershed, while 36.2 ton/ha/year (70.7% difference) of annual sediment yield with new land cover data. Especially the most significant difference in estimated sediment yield was 548.0% for the subwatershed #2 (165.9 ton/ha/year with the MOE land cover data and 25.6 ton/ha/year with new land cover data developed in this study). The results obtained in this study implies that the use of MOE land cover data in SWAT sediment simulation for the Doam-dam watershed could results in 70.7% differences in overall sediment estimation and incorrect identification of sediment hot spot areas (such as subwatershed #2) for effective sediment management. Therefore it is recommended that one needs to carefully validate land cover for the study watershed for accurate hydrologic and sediment simulation with the SWAT model.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Agricultural Engineers Conference
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• 2005.10a
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• pp.241-246
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• 2005

Doam watershed is located at alpine areas in the Kangwon province. The annual average precipitation, including snow accumulation during the winter, at the Doam watershed is significantly higher than other areas. Thus, pollutant laden runoff and sediment discharge from the alpine agricultural fields are causing water quality degradation at the Doam watershed. To estimate soil erosion from the agricultural fields, the Universal Soil Loss Equation (USLE) has been widely used because of its simplicity to use. The USLE rainfall erosivity (R) factor is responsible for impacts of rainfall on soil erosion. Thus, use of constant R factor for the Doam watershed cannot reflect variations in precipitation patterns, consequently soil erosion estimation. In the early spring at the Doam watershed, the stream flow increases because of snow melt, which results in erosion of loosened soil experiencing freezing and thaw during the winter. However, the USLE model cannot consider the impacts on soil erosion of freezing and thaw of the soil. Also, it cannot simulate temporal changes in USLE input parameters. Thus, the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model was investigated for its applicability to estimate soil erosion at the Doam watershed, instead of the widely used USLE model. The SWAT hydrology and erosion/sediment components were validated after calibration of the hydrologic component. The $R^2$ and Nash-Sutcliffe coefficient values are higher enough, thus it was found the SWAT model can be efficiently used to simulate hydrology and sediment yield at the Doam watershed. The effects of snow melt on SWAT estimated stream flow and sediment were investigated using long-term precipitation and temperature data at the Doam watershed. It was found significant amount of flow and sediment in the spring are contributed by melting snow accumulated during the winter. Thus, it is recommend that the SWAT model capable of simulating snow melt and long-term weather data needs to be used in estimating soil erosion at alpine agricultural land instead of the USLE model for successful soil erosion management at the Doam watershed.

• Journal of Korean Society of Rural Planning
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• v.11 no.4 s.29
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• pp.67-74
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• 2005

The Doam watershed is located at alpine areas and the annual average precipitation, including snow accumulation, is significant higher than other areas. Thus, pollutant laden runoff and sediment discharge from the alpine agricultural fields are causing water quality degradation at the Doam watershed. To estimate soil erosion from the agricultural fields, the Universal Soil Loss Equation (USLE) has been widely used because of its simplicity to use. In the early spring at the Doam watershed, the stream flow increases because of snow melt, which results in erosion of loosened soil experiencing freezing and thaw during the winter. Also, extremely torrential rainfall, such as the typhoons 'RUSA' in 2002 and 'MAEMI' in 2003, caused significant amounts of soil erosion and sediment at the Doam watershed. However, the USLE model cannot simulate impacts on soil erosion of freezing and thaw of the soil. It cannot estimate sediment yield from a single torrential rainfall event. Also, it cannot simulate temporal changes in USLE input parameters. Thus, the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model was investigated for its applicability to estimate soil erosion at the Doam watershed, instead of the widely used USLE model. The SWAT hydrology and erosion/sediment components were validated after calibration of the hydrologic component. The R$^2$ and Nash-Sutcliffe coefficient values are higher enough, thus it is found the SWAT model can be efficiently used to simulate hydrology and sediment yield at the Doam watershed. The effects of snow melt on SWAT estimated stream flow and sediment were investigated using long-term precipitation and temperature data at the Doam watershed. It was found significant amount of flow and sediment in the spring are contributed by melting snow accumulated during the winter. Two typhoons in 2002 and 2003, MAEMI and RUSA, caused 33% and 22% of total sediment yields at the Doam watershed, respectively. Thus, it is recommended that the SWAT model, capable of simulating snow melt, sediment yield from a single storm event, and long-term weather data, needs to be used in estimating soil erosion at alpine agricultural areas to develop successful soil erosion management instead of the USLE.

• Journal of Korean Society on Water Environment
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.518-526
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• 2007

There have been serious soil erosion and water pollution problems caused by highland agriculture practices at Doam-dam watershed. Especially agricultural activities, chemical and organic fertilizer and pesticide applications, soil reconditioning to maintain soil fertility are known as primary causes of soil erosion and water qaulity degradation in the receiving water bodies. Among these, soil reconditioning can accelerate soil erosion rates. To develop soil erosion prevention practices, it is necessary to estimate the soil erosion from the watershed. Thus, the Universal Soil Loss Equation (USLE) model has been developed and utilized to assess soil erosion. However, the USLE model cannot be used at watershed scale because it does not consider sediment delivery ratio (SDR) for watershed application. For this reason, the Sediment Assessment Tool for Effective Erosion Control (SA TEEC) was developed to assess the sediment yield at any point in the watershed. The USLE-based SA TEEC system can estimate the SDR using area-based SDR and slope-based SDR module. In this study, the SATEEC system was used to estimate soil erosion and sediment yield at the Doam-dam watershed using the soil properties from reconditioned agricultural fields. Based on the soil sampling and analysis, the US LE K factor was calculated and used in the SA TEEC system to analyze the possible errors of previous USLE application studies using soil properties from the digital soil map, and compared with that using soil properties obtained in this study. The estimated soil erosion at the Doam-dam watershed without using soil properties obtained in the soil sampling and analysis is 1,791,400 ton/year (123 ton/ha/year), while the soil erosion amount is 2,429,900 ton/year (166.8 ton/ha/year) with the use of soil properties from the soil sampling and analysis. There is 35 % increase in estimated soil erosion and sediment yield with the use of soil properties from soil reconditioned agricultural fields. Since significant amount of soil erosion are known to be occurring from the agricultural fields, the soil erosion and sediment yield from only agricultural fields was assessed. The soil erosion rate is 45.9 ton/ha/year without considering soil properties from soil reconditioned agricultural fields, while 105.3 ton/ha/year after considering soil properties obtained in this study, increased in 129%. This study shows that it is very important to use correct soil properties to assess soil erosion and sediment yield simulation. It is recommended that further studies are needed to develop environment friendly soil reconditioning method should be developed and implemented to decrease the speed of soil erosion rates and water quality degradation.

• Journal of Environmental Science International
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.723-735
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• 2014

Sediment discharge by long-term runoff in the Nakdong River watershed should be predicted for the maintenance and management of the Nakdong River newly changed by the four major river restoration project. The data establishment by the analysis of runoff and sediment discharge using the long-term watershed model is necessary to predict possible problems by incoming sediments and to prepare countermeasures for the maintenance and management. Therefore, sediment discharges by long-term runoff in the main points of the Nakdong River were calculated using SWAT(soil and water assessment tool) model and the relations and features between rainfall, runoff, and sediment discharge were analyzed in this study. As a result of sediment discharge calculation in the main points of the Nakdong River and tributaries, the sediment discharge at the outlet of the Naesung Stream was greater than the Jindong Station in the Lower Nakdong River from 1999 to 2008 except the years with low precipitation. The sediment discharge at the Nakdong River Estuary Barrage (NREB) was corresponding to 20% of the Jindong Station which is located about 80 km upstream from NREB.

• Journal of The Korean Society of Agricultural Engineers
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• v.60 no.2
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• pp.1-11
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• 2018

Probable Maximum Flood (PMF) is mostly applied for the designs of large-scale hydraulic structures and it is estimated by computing the runoff hydrograph where Probable Maximum Precipitation (PMP) is inserted as design rainfall. The existing PMP is estimated by transferring the heavy rainfall from all watersheds of korea to the design watershed, however, in this study, PMP was analyzed by selecting only rainfall events occurred in the design watershed. And then, Catchment-scale Soil Erosion Model (CSEM) was used to estimate the PMF and sediment-runoff yield according to the watershed-based estimated PMP. Although the PMF estimated in this study was lower than the existing estimated PMF in the Yongdam-dam basin, it was estimated to be higher than the 200-year frequency design flood discharge. In addition, sediment-runoff yield was estimated with a 0.05 cm of the maximum erosion and a 0.06 cm of the maximum deposition, and a total sediment-runoff yield of 168,391 tons according to 24-hour PMP duration.

• Korean Journal of Environmental Agriculture
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• v.30 no.3
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• pp.268-274
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• 2011

BACKGROUND: A large scale of sediment load delivered from watershed causes substantial waterway damages and water quality degradation. Controlling sediment loading requires the knowledge of the soil erosion and sedimentation. The various factors such as watershed size, slope, climate, land use may affect sediment delivery processes. Traditionally sediment delivery ratio prediction equations have been developed by relating watershed characteristics to measured sediment yield divided by predicted gross erosion. However, sediment prediction equations have been developed for only a few regions because of limited sediment data. Besides, little research has been done on the prediction of sediment delivery ratio for asia monsoon period in mountainous watershed. METHODS AND RESULTS: In this study Tank model was expanded and applied for estimating sediment yield to Oship River of east coast. The rainfall-runoff in 2006 was verified using the Tank model and we derived good result between observed and calculated discharge in 2009 at the same conditions. In relation to sediment yield, the sediment delivery rate of 2006 was very high than 2009 regardless of methods for estimating sediment load. It was thought to be affected by heavy rainfall due to the typhoon. CONCLUSION(s): For estimating sediment volume from watershed, long-term monitoring data on discharge and sediment is needed. This model will be able to apply to predict discharge and sediment yield simultaneously in ungauged area. This approach is more effective and less expensive method than the traditional method which needs a lot of data collection.

• Journal of Korean Society on Water Environment
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.488-498
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• 2008

Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model have been widely used in simulating hydrology and water quality analysis at watershed scale. The SWAT model extracts topographic feature using the Digital Elevation Model (DEM) for hydrology and pollutant generation and transportation within watershed. Use of various DEM cell size in the SWAT leads to different results in extracting topographic feature for each subwatershed. So, it is recommended that model users use very detailed spatial resolution DEM for accurate hydrology analysis and water quality simulation. However, use of high resolution DEM is sometimes difficult to obtain and not efficient because of computer processing capacity and model execution time. Thus, the SWAT Topographic Feature Extraction Error (STOPFEE) Fix module, which can extract topographic feature of high resolution DEM from low resolution and updates SWAT topographic feature automatically, was developed and evaluated in this study. The analysis of average slope vs. DEM cell size revealed that average slope of watershed increases with decrease in DEM cell size, finer resolution of DEM. This falsification of topographic feature with low resolution DEM affects soil erosion and sediment behaviors in the watershed. The annual average sediment for Soyanggang-dam watershed with DEM cell size of 20 m was compared with DEM cell size of 100 m. There was 83.8% difference in simulated sediment without STOPFEE module and 4.4% difference with STOPFEE module applied although the same model input data were used in SWAT run. For Imha-dam watershed, there was 43.4% differences without STOPFEE module and 0.3% difference with STOPFEE module. Thus, the STOPFEE topographic database for Soyanggang-dam watershed was applied for Chungju-dam watershed because its topographic features are similar to Soyanggang-dam watershed. Without the STOPFEE module, there was 98.7% difference in simulated sediment for Chungju-dam watershed for DEM cell size of both 20 m and 100 m. However there was 20.7% difference in simulated sediment with STOPFEE topographic database for Soyanggang-dam watershed. The application results of STOPFEE for three watersheds showed that the STOPFEE module developed in this study is an effective tool to extract topographic feature of high resolution DEM from low resolution DEM. With the STOPFEE module, low-capacity computer can be also used for accurate hydrology and sediment modeling for bigger size watershed with the SWAT. It is deemed that the STOPFEE module database needs to be extended for various watersheds in Korea for wide application and accurate SWAT runs with lower resolution DEM.

• Journal of Korean Society on Water Environment
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.441-451
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• 2009

To evaluate the soil erosion best management practices, many computer models has been utilized over the years. Among those, the USLE and SWAT models have been widely used. These models estimate the soil erosion from the field using empirically-based USLE/MULSE in it. However, these models are not good enough to estimate soil erosion from highland agricultural watershed where severe storm events are causing soil erosion and muddy water issues at the receiving watersheds. Thus, physically-based WEPP watershed version was applied to a watershed, located at Jawoon-ri, Gangwon with very detailed rainfall data, rather than daily rainfall data. Then it was validated with measured sediment data collected at the sediment settling ponds and through overland flow. In this study, very detailed rainfall data, crop management data, soil data reflecting soil reconditioned for higher crop production were used in the WEPP runs. The $R^2$ and the EI for runoff comparisons were 0.88 and 0.91, respectively. For sediment comparisons, the $R^2$ and the EI values were 0.95 and 0.91. Since the WEPP provides higher accuracies in predicting runoff and sediment yield from the study watershed, various slope scenarios (2%, 3%, 5.5%, 8%, 10%, 13%, 15%, 18%, 20%, 23%, 25%, 28%, 30%) were made and simulated sediment yield values were analyzed to develop appropriate soil erosion management practices. It was found that soil erosion increase linearly with increase in slope of the field in the watershed. However, the soil erosion increases dramatically with the slope of 20% or greater. Therefore special care should be taken for the agricultural field with slope greater than 20%. As shown in this study, the WEPP watershed version is suitable model to predict soil erosion where torrential rainfall events are causing significant amount of soil loss from the field and it can also be used to develop site-specific best management practices.