• The Journal of Engineering Geology
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.409-425
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• 2013

This study presents a prediction of a time-series of the area inundated by effluent from Heavenly Lake caused by ground behavior prior to a volcanic eruption. A GIS-based hydrological algorithm that considers the multi-flow direction of effluent, the absorption and storage capacity of the ground soil, the storage volume of the basin or the depression terrain, was developed. To analyze the propagation pattern, four hypothetical collapse zones on the cheonji ground were set, considering the topographical characteristics and distributions of volcanic rocks at Mt. Baekdu. The results indicate that at 3 hours after collapse, for both scenarios 1 and 2 (collapses of the entire/southern boundary of cheonji), a flood hazard exists for villages in China, but not for those on the North Korean side of the mountain, due to the topographical characteristics of Mt. Baekdu. It is predicted that villages in both North Korea and China would be significantly damaged by flood inundation at 3 hours elapsed time for both scenarios 3 and 4 (collapses on the southern boundary of cheonji and on the southeastern-peak area).

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.34 no.6
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• pp.479-491
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• 2013

Products of the eruption of Mt. Baekdusan are identified as volcanic materials at the estuaries of the Songhuagang river to north, the Dumangang river to east and the Amnokgang river to west. More speficially, pyroclastic flows, lahars and volcanic floods can affect an area of 400km in radius, centering around Lake Cheonji caldera. However, unlike the millenium eruption, the flow situation has been changed. Because multi-purpose dams and reserviors with a combined pondage of mora than 2 billion tons of water have been built in the rivers of which sources are originated from Lake Cheonji caldera. In addition, the flow of fluids expected to take place when the volcano has erupted is thought to be affected by artificial constructions in both direct and indirect ways. This study calculates the direction of fluids flow by using numerical analyses of pyroclastic flows, lahars and volcanic floods that can occur when the volcano of Mt. Baekdusan has erupted. We also estimate the scope of damages by pyroclastic flows, lahars, volcanic flooding caused by the pondage of the dams and water storages in and around Mt. Baekdusan. Pyroclastic flows transported over the steep slopes at the early times of eruptions move over the mountain slopes, affecting airplanes, and lahars due to leaks of Lake Cheonji could reach as far as major rivers and streams near Mt. Baekdusan. Unlike historical accounts, volcanic flood is expected to be limited in its scope of influence to reservoirs bigger than Lake Cheonji in pondage.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.34 no.6
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• pp.492-506
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• 2013

The historical accounts and materials about the eruption of Mt. Baekdusan as observed by the geological survey is now showing some signs of waking from a long slumber. As a response of the volcanic eruption of Mt. Baekdusan, water release may occur from the stored water in Lake Cheonjii caldera. The volcanic flood is crucial in that it has huge potential energy that can destruct all kinds of man-made structures and that its velocity can reach up to 100 km $hr^{-1}$ to cover hundreds of kilometers of downstream of Lake Cheonji. The ultimate goal of the study is to estimate the level of damage caused by the volcanic flood of Lake Cheon-Ji caldera. As a preliminary study a scenario-based numerical analysis is performed to build hydrographs as a function of time. The analysis is performed for each scenario (breach, magma uplift, combination of uplift and breach, formation of precipitation etc.) and the parameters to require a model structure is chosen on the basis of the historic records of other volcanos. This study only considers the amount of water at the rim site as a function of time for the estimation whereas the downstream routing process is not considered in this study.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.41 no.1
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• pp.31-39
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• 2020

Cheonji, the largest caldera lake in Asia, is located at the summit of Baekdu Mountain. Cheonji is covered with snow and ice for about six months of the year due to its high altitude and its surrounding environment. Since most of the sources of water are from groundwater, the water temperature is closely related to the volcanic activity. However, in the 2000s, many volcanic activities have been monitored on the mountain. In this study, we analyzed the dimension of ice produced during winter in Baekdu Mountain using Sentinel-1 satellite image data provided by the European Space Agency (ESA). In order to calculate the dimension of ice from the backscatter image of the Sentinel-1 satellite, 20 Gray-Level Co-occurrence Matrix (GLCM) layers were generated from two polarization images using texture analysis. The method used in calculating the area was utilized with the Support Vector Machine (SVM) algorithm to classify the GLCM layer which is to calculate the dimension of ice in the image. Also, the calculated area was correlated with temperature data obtained from Samjiyeon weather station. This study could be used as a basis for suggesting an alternative to the new method of calculating the area of ice before using a long-term time series analysis on a full scale.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.38 no.6_2
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• pp.1691-1707
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• 2022

Cheonji Lake, the caldera of Baekdu Mountain, located on the border of the Korean Peninsula and China, alternates between melting and freezing seasonally. There is a magma chamber beneath Cheonji, and variations in the magma chamber cause volcanic antecedents such as changes in the temperature and water pressure of hot spring water. Consequently, there is an abnormal region in Cheonji where ice melts quicker than in other areas, freezes late even during the freezing period, and has a high-temperature water surface. The abnormal area is a discharge region for hot spring water, and its ice gradient may be used to monitor volcanic activity. However, due to geographical, political and spatial issues, periodic observation of abnormal regions of Cheonji is limited. In this study, the degree of ice change in the optimal region was quantified using a Landsat -5/-7/-8 optical satellite image and a Modified U-Net regression model. From January 22, 1985 to December 8, 2020, the Visible and Near Infrared (VNIR) band of 83 Landsat images including anomalous regions was utilized. Using the relative spectral reflectance of water and ice in the VNIR band, unique data were generated for quantitative ice variability monitoring. To preserve as much information as possible from the visible and near-infrared bands, ice gradient was noticed by applying it to U-Net with two encoders, achieving good prediction accuracy with a Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) of 140 and a correlation value of 0.9968. Since the ice change value can be seen with high precision from Landsat images using Modified U-Net in the future may be utilized as one of the methods to monitor Baekdu Mountain's volcanic activity, and a more specific volcano monitoring system can be built.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.34 no.6
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• pp.456-469
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• 2013

This study is performed to find out the eruptive events of the historical period recorded in literature, which have been recognized and regarded as ones from Mt. Baekdusan, and to make volcanological interpretations of the eruptive events. Since the Millennium eruption, more than 31 eruptive events have been discovered, most of which are Plinian eruptions with volcanic ash that dispersed into the regions in the vicinity of the volcano. The 1903 record includes the event of the phreatomagmatic or vulcanian eruption that occurred within the Cheonji caldera lake. Based on the eruption records of the historical period and the 2002 precursor unrest to volcanic eruptions, Mt. Baekdusan has been evaluated and regarded as an active volcano that has the potential to erupt in the future.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.34 no.6
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• pp.507-514
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• 2013

Recent reports about Mt. Baekdusan indicate an increasing potential of lahar generation due to volcanic activity around Lake Cheonji. In this study, we model lahar assuming volcanic activity underneath the caldera located at the top of Mt. Baekdusan. Lahar-inundation hazard zones (LAHARZ), software that runs within a Geographic Information System (GIS), was used for lahar modeling in various conditions of digital terrain resolution and model parameters. The sensitivity analysis of model parameters shows that both sink threshold and terrain resolution have limited impact on the modeling result. Combinations of stream threshold and resolution indicate distinctive distributions in stream delineation. The limitations of LAHARZ seem to largely be associated with the assumption of an existing flow generation algorithm. However, the impact of different resolutions on the final lahar extent was found to be small.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.34 no.6
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• pp.470-478
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• 2013

There have been a number of observed precursors of volcanic activities- such as volcanic earthquake, surface inflation, specific volcanic gas emission, temperature of hot spring- at Mt. Baekdusan since 2002. We identified the increase of the volume of magma chamber beneath Mt. Baekdusan as we observed an inflation trend of vertical and horizontal surface displacement around Cheonji caldera lake by using precise leveling data from 2002 to 2009. The surface displacement trend changed to deflation in 2010, and the trend changed to inflation again after a while. Utilizing the data of inflated surface (46.33 mm) on the northern slope of Mt. Baekdusan from 2002 to 2003, we calculated the volume change of magma chamber beneath the Mt. Baekdusan. The volume change was about 0.008 $km^3$ ($7.7-8.0{\times}10^6m^3$) from 2002 to 2003. It indicated that a new magma (0.008 $km^3$) injected to the magma chamber 5 km below Mt. Baekdusan.