• Economic and Environmental Geology
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• v.53 no.5
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• pp.585-596
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• 2020

The 2017 Pohang Earthquakes occurred near a drill site in the Pohang Enhanced Geothermal System. Water injected for well stimulation was believed to have reactivated the buried near-critically stressed Miocene faults by the accumulation of the Quaternary tectonic strain. However, surface expressions of the Quaternary tectonic activity had not been reported near the epicenter of the earthquakes before the site construction. Unusual, large-scale water-escaped structures were identified 4 km away from the epicenter during a post-seismic investigation. The water-escaped structures comprise Miocene mudstones injected into overlying Pleistocene coastal sediments that formed during Marine Isotope Stage 5. This indicates the vulnerable state of the mudstones long after deposition, resulted from the combined effects of rapid tectonic uplift (before significant diagenesis) and the development of an aquifer at their unconformable interface of the mudstone. Based on the detailed field analysis and consideration of all possible endogenic triggers, we interpreted the structures to have been formed by elevated pore pressures in the mudstones (thixotropy), triggered by cyclic ground motion during the earthquakes. This interpretation is strengthened by the presence of faults 400 m from the study area, which cut unconsolidated coastal sediment deposited after Marine Isotope Stage 5. Geological context, including high rates of tectonic uplift in SE Korea, paleo-seismological research on Quaternary faults near the study area, and historical records of paleoearthquakes in SE Korea, also support the interpretation. Thus, epicenter and surrounding areas of the 2017 Pohang Earthquake are considered as a paleoseismologically active area, and the causative fault of the 2017 Pohang Earthquakes was expected to be nearly critical state.

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.45 no.11
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• pp.1169-1186
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• 2012

Storage function method has been used for flood forecasting in the major rivers in Korea, however, the researches on the relationship between the parameters and runoff characteristics was not sufficient. In addition, there has been a controversy about the optimized parameters without the consideration of the physical characteristics of the basin. Therefore, in this study, the SCE-UA method is used to optimize the parameters and the proposed method was applied with two stage optimization in the Jeongseon and Yeongwol watersheds located in the most upstream in the South Han river. The contour map was developed to investigate parameters and the error surface calculated from the runoff. The proposed parameters is to provide a range of the possible parameter set in a watershed, rather than a specific value. However, the applicability is examined using the average value of the proposed ranged parameters. In this study, the criticism about the optimization technique to find an optimal value having no physical meaning on a watershed is tried to avoid. The objective of this study is to provide a range of parameters for the flood forecasting model and the intuition about the behavior of the parameters, so the efficiency of flood forecasting is increased.

• Journal of Conservation Science
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.345-351
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• 2014

Chemical and Pb isotope analysis were performed in order to determine the origin of bronze artefacts excavated from the Inyongsaji site in South Korea. The result of ICP-MS shows that they are tin bronzes in which lead was not intentionally added during production. Pb isotope data analyzed by TIMS are plotted in the southern region of Korea and China of the distribution map drawn by Mabuchi(1985). On the other hand, the identical isotope data are plotted in the Taebaek basin and the Olcheon metamorphic belt correspondent to zone2 and zone3 respectively. It is believed that the isotope data on the tin bronzes which have very low lead content can be used to trace the origin of copper ore rather than those of either lead or tin ore. Pb istope analysis allows diverse interpretation as it can be applied to any object containing trace amounts of lead. In addition, accumulation of isotope data as well as further studies will improve reliability of the provenance studies.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.222-230
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• 2016

HEMIRE is a 6,000-meter-class remotely operated vehicle (ROV) that has been developed for observation and sampling of objects of interest on the deep seabed. We first carried out deep-seabed exploration around the slopes of the Hupo Bank and the Ulleung Basin in the East Sea in June 2015. Over two weeks, a total of 10 dives were made from a support ship, the R/V Onnuri, at eight stations with water depth ranging between 194 and 2,080 m. The dive times ranged from 1 to 6 hours, depending on the operating conditions. We obtained the following results: 1) video images of the deep seafloor; 2) red snow crab density data (a major fishery resource) and inventories of deep-sea fauna, including an unrecorded organism; 3) specific topographies such as canyons slopes; 4) an undisturbed sediment core obtained using a push corer; and 5) observations of the seabed surface covered with discarded anthropogenic waste material.

• Korean Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences
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• v.43 no.5
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• pp.406-414
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• 2010

The impact of rainfall events on the sanitary indicator bacteria density of the shellfish-growing waters in Geoje Bay and Jaran Bay in Korea was investigated. The shellfish-growing area in Geoje Bay, which is a nearly closed basin, was not affected significantly, except near the stream mouth after 11.5 mm of rainfall in 1 day. However, most of the shellfish-growing water in the bay was polluted by fecal coliform bacteria after rain as heavy as 43.0 mm, and the levels of fecal indicator bacteria in some of the sea near the coast did not recover completely until 24 hours after the rainfall. By contrast, in Jaran Bay, which has no significant pollution source in the drainage area, although 9.3-490 MPN/100 mL of fecal coliform bacteria were detected near the stream mouth after rainfall of 33.5 and 81.0 mm, a very low level of the indicator bacteria was detected in the designated shellfish-growing area. During the investigation, the correlations between the sanitary indicator bacteria density and physical parameters, such as salinity and turbidity, were evaluated. Both the total coliform and fecal coliform densities were inversely correlated with salinity. Turbidity was positively correlated with the indicator bacteria density. The survey results suggest that for more efficient management of the shellfish-growing areas located in coastal areas, such as shellfish harvesting after rainfall, a detailed investigation of the effects of rainfall on the bacterial water quality in each growing area is needed.

• Journal of the Korean Association of Geographic Information Studies
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.119-132
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• 2012

Recently, forest soil sediment disasters resulting from locally concentrated heavy rainfall have been occurring frequently in steep slope areas. The importance of landslide hazard map is emerging to analyze landslide vulnerable areas. This study was carried out to develop HyGIS-Landslide based on Hydro Geographic Information System in order to analyze forest soil sediment disaster in the mountainous river basin. HyGIS-Landslide is one of HyGIS components designed by considering the landslide hazard criteria of Korea Forest Service. It could show the distribution of landslide hazard areas after calculating the spatial data. In this system, the user could reset the weight of hazard criteria to reflect the regional characteristics of the landslide area. This component provided user interface that could make the latest spatial data available in the area of interest. HyGIS-Landslide could be applied to the surveyor's compensation score and it was possible to reflect the landslide risk exactly through it. Also, it could be used in topographic analysis techniques providing spatial analysis and making topographical parameters in HyGIS. Finally the accuracy could be acquired by calculating the landslide hazard grade map and landslide mapping data. This study applied HyGIS-Landslide at the Gangwon-do province sample site. As a result, HyGIS-Landslide could be applied to a decision support system searching for mountainous disaster risk region; it could be classified more effectively by re-weighting the landslide hazard criteria.

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.47 no.11
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• pp.1017-1026
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• 2014

To investigate the effect of upstream dam operation and river water use on the downstream flows, SWAT-K watershed model was applied to the Paldang Dam watershed of the Han River basin. Analysis results from 2001 to 2009 showed that outflows from the multi-purpose dams such as the Soyanggang Dam and Chungju Dam much have a strong influence on the downstream flows during both the low- and high-flow seasons. This resulted an increase of low-flow at the Paldang Dam, the end of Pukhangang, and the Yangpyeong stage station by $100.57m^3/s$, $33.01m^3/s$, and $49.66m^3/s$, respectively. Whereas, the impact of river water use was hardly found in the Pukhangang, and also was not significant in the (Nam)hangang. Therefore, the effect of small dam such as the Hoengseong Dam or river water use would be able be excluded for long-term runoff analysis. But, in the case of the areas with a large amount of water use, a sufficient information such water-intake and water movement also must be taken into account like this study.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.41 no.8
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• pp.511-519
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• 2017

In this study, we have performed tests to improve the productivity of hybrid solar stills, which can be operated by solar thermal energy and/or waste heat of exhaust gas from electrical generators. The experimental apparatus is a hybrid solar still with a $1m{\times}2m$ collecting area, which consists of a conventional simple solar still and a vertical multi-effect diffusion(MED) section. The experiments were conducted under various operating conditions, with two identical hybrid solar stills, using solar radiation as the energy source. The results of the tests showed that the yield of the hybrid solar still depends on the various operating conditions. Insulation at the side glasses and a lower basin seawater level increased the productivity of the hybrid solar still. Reflecting fins with less than 47% reflectivity unexpectedly decreased the total productivity. However, the various feeding flow rate of the seawater into MED part did not show clear effects on productivity in the tested range.

• Korean Journal of Environmental Biology
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• v.36 no.4
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• pp.638-646
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• 2018

The purpose of this study was to investigate the long-term habitat morphological alteration resulting from a large dam and weirs in the Tamjin River. To achieve this, we carried out a hydrograph analysis and a substrate size distribution analysis. We also estimated the channel width, bar area and vegetation encroachment using aerial photographs taken before and after the construction of the dam and weirs. The result of the hydrological analysis showed that flooding downstream was greatly reduced with small peaks occurrence after the dam construction. Interestingly, normal hydrographs in the main channel appeared just after tributary conjunction. There was a similar pattern in the substrate size analysis. Despite coarsened substrate just downstream of the dam site, more sand appeared again after introduction of the tributary. However, there was an increase in the bar area downstream of the dam's channels with most bars covered with vegetation. The channel width increased at the upper area of weirs through impoundment, but decreased downstream because of vegetation encroachment. This study indicate that unregulated tributary plays an important role in restoring hydro-physical habitat conditions in mainstream channels below a large dam. However, numerous weirs could be a causal factor to accelerate habitat deterioration in the dam downstream channels.

• Korean Journal of Mineralogy and Petrology
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• v.33 no.4
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• pp.419-426
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• 2020

Understanding the pore structure including pore shape and connectivity in unconventional reservoirs is essential to increase the recovery rate of unconventional energy resources such as shale gas and oil. In this study, we found analysis condition to probe the nanoscale pore structure in shale reservoirs using Focused Ion Beam (FIB) and Ion Milling System (IMS). A-068 core samples from Liard Basin are used to probe the pore structure in shale reservoirs. The pore structure is analyzed with different pretreatment methods and analysis condition because each sample has different characteristics. The results show that surface milling by FIB is effective to obtain pore images of several micrometers local area while milling a large-area by IMS is efficient to observe various pore structure in a short time. Especially, it was confirmed that the pore structure of rocks with high content of carbonate minerals and high strength can be observed with milling by IMS. In this study, the analysis condition and process for observing the pore structure in the shale reservoirs is established. Further studies are needed to perform for probing the effect of pore size and shape on the enhancement of shale gas recovery.