• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.56 no.12
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• pp.883-893
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• 2023

While South Korea's dependence on imported grains is very high, droughts impacts from exporting countries have been overlooked. Using the Evaporative Stress Index (ESI), this study globally analyzed frequency, extent, and long-term trends of agricultural droughts and their relation to natural oscillations and global crop prices. Results showed that global-scale correlations were found between ESI and soil moisture anomalies, and they were particularly strong in crop cultivation areas. The high correlations in crop cultivation areas imply a strong land-atmosphere coupling, which can lead to relatively large yield losses with a minor soil moisture deficits. ESI showed a clear decreasing trend in crop cultivation areas from 1991 to 2022, and this trend may continue due to global warming. The sharp increases in the grain prices in 2012 and 2022 were likely related to increased drought areas in major grain-exporting countries, and they seemed to elevate South Korea's producer price index. This study suggests the need for drought risk management for grain-exporting countries to reduce socioeconomic impacts in South Korea.

• Korean Journal of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology
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• v.3 no.4
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• pp.220-237
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• 2001

Over the 20th century global temperature increase has been 0.6$^{\circ}C$. The globally averaged surface temperature is projected to increase by 1.4 to 5.8$^{\circ}C$ over the period 1990 to 2100. Nearly all land areas will have higher maximum temperature and minimum temperature, and fewer cold days and frost days. More intense precipitation events will take plate over many areas. Over most mid-latitude continental interiors will have increased summer continental drying and associated risk of drought. By 2100, if the annual surface temperature increase is 3.5$^{\circ}C$, we will have 15.9$^{\circ}C$ from 12.4$^{\circ}C$ at present. Also the annual precipitation will range 1,118-2,447 mm from 972-1,841 mm at present in Korea. Consequently the average crop periods for summer crops will be 250 days that prolonged 32 days than at present. In the case of gradual increase of global warming, an annual crop can be adapted to the changing climate through the selection of filial generations in breeding process. The perennial crops such as an apple should be shifted the chief producing place to northern or high latitude areas where below 13.5$^{\circ}C$ of the annual surface temperature. If global warming happens suddenly over the threshold atmospheric greenhouse gases, then all ecosystems will have tremendous disturbance. Agricultural land-use plan, which state that farmers decide what to plant, based on their climate-based advantages. Therefore, farmers will mitigate possible negative imparts associated with the climate change. The farmers will have application to use agricultural meteorological information system, and agricultural long-range weather forecast system for their agroecosystems management. The ideal types of crops under $CO_2$ increase and climate change conditions are considered that ecological characteristics need indispensable to accomplish the sustainable agriculture as the diversification of genetic resources from yield-oriented to biomass-oriented characteristics with higher potential of $CO_2$ absorption and primary production. In addition, a heat-and-cold tolerance, a pest resistance, an environmental adaptability, and production stability should be also incorporated collectively into integrated agroecosystem.

• Korean Journal of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.10-18
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• 2017

Korean Red Pine (Pinus densiflora) has been protected and used as the most ecologically and socio-culturally important tree species in Korea. However, as dieback of Korean red pines has occurred in the protected area of the forest genetic resources. The aims of this study is to identify causes for dieback of pine tree by investigating topographical characteristics of pine tree dieback and its correlation to meteorological factors. We extracted the dead trees from the time series aerial images and analyzed geomorphological characteristics of dead tree concentration area. As a result, 1,956 dead pine trees were extracted in the study region of 2,600 ha. Dieback of pine trees was found mostly in the areas with high altitude, high solar radiation, low topographic wetness index, south and south-west slopes, ridgelines, and high wind exposure compared to other living pine forest area. These areas are classified as high temperature and high drought stress regions due to micro-climatic characteristics affected by topographic factors. As high temperature and drought stress are generally increasing with climate change, we can evaluated that a risk of pine tree dieback is also increasing. Based on these geomorphological characteristics, we developed a pine tree dieback risk map using Maximum Entropy Model (MaxEnt), and it can be useful for establishing Korean red pine protection and management strategies.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Agricultural Machinery Conference
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• 1996.06c
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• pp.977-986
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• 1996

The uncertainty of rains at the onset of wet season (WS) and the drought risk involved hinder growing more than one rainfed lwoland rice crop per year. Establishing transplanted rice well into the WS leaves insufficient moisture in the soil for subsequent crop. Rice establishment early in the season gives the farmer better opportunities to grow a crop after rice. An experiment was conducted startign in 1993 to evaluate dry seeding of rice through slit soil seeding. It is done utilizing the vertical metering slit seeder for conserving soil moisture coming from the first rains in the early WS to sustain germination and establishment of the seeding at least until the succeeding rains under therainfed lowland (RL) environment. The treatment consisted of slit-seeding the PSBRc 14 into the tilled and nontilled plots at 100kg/ha and at depths of <10 mm (shallow seeding) and 60-70m (deep seeding). The control treatment was broadcast seeded on tilled soil and harrow to cover the seeds The superior crop establishment observed in 1995 WS experiment on nontilled, slit-seeded plots confirmed the results observed in 1993 WS and 1994 WS experiments. Emergence in deep seeding was not significantly different from shallow seeding in nontilled plots giving an average yield of 2.1 t/ha in all slit-seeded plots. This offers an advantage of reduced energy in put in nontilled shallow seeding. However, heavy weed infestation has to be addressed at the early stage of rice in nontilled soil to get the full advantage from slit seeding. The consistently better crop establishment observed in slit seeding over that of broadcast seeding in the WS of 1993, 1994 and 1995 also demonstrates that the slit seeding technology can be adopted with confidence in the rainfed lowland field condition to reduce the risks involved in broadcast seeding.

• Proceedings of the Korea Water Resources Association Conference
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• 2022.05a
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• pp.516-516
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• 2022

Agricultural reservoirs are critical water resources structures to ensure continuous water supplies for rice cultivation in Korea. Climate change has increased the risk of reservoir failure by exacerbating discrepancies in upstream runoff generation, downstream irrigation water demands, and evaporation losses. In this study, the variations in water balance components of 400 major reservoirs during 1973-2017 were examined to identify the reservoirs with reliable storage capacities and resilience. A conceptual lumped hydrological model was used to transform the incident rainfall into the inflows entering the reservoirs and the paddy water balance model was used to estimate the irrigation water demand. Historical climate data analysis showed a sharp warming gradient during the last 45 years that was particularly evident in the central and southern regions of the country, which were also the main agricultural areas with high reservoir density. We noted a country-wide progressive increase in average annual cumulative rainfall, but the forcing mechanism of the rainfall increment and its spatial-temporal trends were not fully understood. Climate warming resulted in a significant increase in irrigation water demand, while heavy rains increased runoff generation in the reservoir watersheds. Most reservoirs had reliable storage capacities to meet the demands of a 10-year return frequency drought but the resilience of reservoirs gradually declined over time. This suggests that the recovery time of reservoirs from the failure state had increased which also signifies that the duration of the dry season has been prolonged while the wet season has become shorter and/or more intense. The watershed-irrigated area ratio (W-I_ratio) was critical and the results showed that a slight disruption in reservoir water balance under the influence of future climate change would seriously compromise the performance of reservoirs with W-I_ratio< 5.

• Proceedings of the Korea Water Resources Association Conference
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• 2023.05a
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• pp.30-30
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• 2023

This study aims to establish the multi-reservoir operation system model in the Upper Mun River Basin which includes 5 main dams namely, Mun Bon (MB), Lamchae (LC), Lam Takhong (LTK), Lam Phraphoeng (LPP), and Lower Lam Chiengkrai (LLCK) Dams. The knowledge and AI technology were applied aiming to develop innovative prototype for SMART dam-reservoir operation in future. Two different sorts of reservoir operation system model namely, Fuzzy Logic (FL) and Constraint Programming (CP) as well as the development of rainfall and reservoir inflow prediction models using Machine Learning (ML) technique were made to help specify the right amount of daily reservoir releases for the Royal Irrigation Department (RID). The model could also provide the essential information particularly for the Office of National Water Resource of Thailand (ONWR) to determine the short-term and long-term water resource management plan and strengthen water security against flood and drought in this region. The simulated results of base case scenario for reservoir operation in the Upper Mun from 2008 to 2021 indicated that in the same circumstances, FL and CP models could specify the new release schemes to increase the reservoir water storages at the beginning of dry season of approximately 125.25 and 142.20 MCM per year. This means that supplying the agricultural water to farmers in dry season could be well managed. In other words, water scarcity problem could substantially be moderated at some extent in case of incapability to control the expansion of cultivated area size properly. Moreover, using AI technology to determine the new reservoir release schemes plays important role in reducing the actual volume of water shortfall in the basin although the drought situation at LTK and LLCK Dams were still existed in some periods of time. Meanwhile, considering the predicted inflow and hydrologic factors downstream of 5 main dams by FL model and minimizing the flood volume by CP model could ensure that flood risk was considerably minimized as a result of new release schemes.