• Korean Journal of Environmental Agriculture
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• v.39 no.1
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• pp.65-74
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• 2020

BACKGROUND: Soil carbon sequestration has been investigated for a long time because of its potential to mitigate the greenhouse effect. No- or reduced tillage, crop rotations, or cover crops have been investigated and practiced to sequester carbon in soils but the roles of soil biota, particularly microorganisms, have been mostly ignored although they affect the amount and stability of soil organic matters. METHODS AND RESULTS: In this study we analyzed the organic matter and microbial community in organically cultivated corn field soils where no-tillage (NT) or conventional tillage (CT) had been practiced for about three years. The amounts of organic matter and recalcitrant carbon pool were 18.3 g/kg dry soil and 4.1 g C/kg dry soil, respectively in NT soils, while they were 12.4 and 2.5, respectively in CT soils. The amounts of RNA and DNA, and the copy numbers of bacterial 16S rRNA genes and fungal ITS sequences were higher in NT soils than in CT soils. No-tillage treatment increased the diversities of soil bacterial and fungal communities and clearly shifted the bacterial and fungal community structures. In NT soils the relative abundances of bacterial phyla known as copiotrophs, Betaproteobacteria and Bacteroidetes, increased while those known as oligotrophs, Acidobacteria and Verrucomicrobia, decreased compared to CT soils. The relative abundance of a fungal phylum, Glomeromycota, whose members are known as arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, was about two time higher in NT soils than in CT soils, suggesting that the higher amount of organic matter in NT soils is related to its abundance. CONCLUSION: This study shows that no-tillage treatment greatly affects soil microbial abundance and community structure, which may affect the amount and stability of soil organic matter.

• Korean Journal of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.51-60
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• 2003

Rice, which occupies about 60% of the farmland in Korea, is a staple crop in Asia. It not only absorbs $CO_2$ from the atmosphere, but also emits carbon in a form of CH$_4$. It has a potential role in the global budget of greenhouse gases because of its relative contributions of carbon absorption and emission associated with changing hydrologic cycle. To better understand its current and future role, seasonal variations of energy and $CO_2$ exchange in this critical ecosystem need to be quantified. The purpose of this study was to measure, document and understand the exchange of energy and $CO_2$ in a typical rice paddy in Korea throughout the whole growing season. Since late April of 2002, we have conducted measurements of energy and $CO_2$ exchange in a rural rice paddy at Hari site, one of the Korea regional network of tower flux measurement (KoFlux). After the quality control and gap-filling, the observed fluxes were analyzed in the context of micrometeorology and biophysics. $CO_2$ and energy exchanges varied significantly with land cover changes (e.g., plant growth stages), in addition to changes in weather and climate conditions. This study, reporting first direct measurement of energy and $CO_2$ exchange over a rice paddy in Korea, would serve as a useful database as one of the reference sites in AsiaFlux and FLUXNET.

• Korean Journal of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.132-139
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• 2007

The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) regularly provides the eight-day gross primary productivity (GPP) at 1 km resolution. In this study, we evaluated the uncertainties of MODIS GPP caused by errors associated with the Data Assimilation Office (DAO) meteorology and a biophysical variable (fraction of absorbed photosynthetically active radiation, FPAR). In order to recalculate the improved GPP estimate, we employed ground weather station data and reconstructed cloud-free FPAR. The official MODIS GPP was evaluated as +17% higher than the improved GPP. The error associated with DAO meteorology was identified as the primary and the error from the cloud-contaminated FPAR as the secondary constituent in the integrative uncertainty. Among various biome types, the highest relative error of the official MODIS GPP to the improved GPP was found in the mixed forest biome with RE of 20% and the smallest errors were shown in crop land cover at 11%. Our results indicated that the uncertainty embedded in the official MODIS GPP product was considerable, indicating that the MODIS GPP needs to be reconstructed with the improved input data of daily surface meteorology and cloud-free FPAR in order to accurately monitor vegetation productivity in Korea.

• Journal of the Korean Association of Geographic Information Studies
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.66-80
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• 2012

It is necessary to normalize spectral image values derived from multi-temporal satellite data to a common scale in order to apply remote sensing methods for change detection, disaster mapping, crop monitoring and etc. There are two main approaches: absolute radiometric normalization and relative radiometric normalization. This study focuses on the multi-temporal satellite image processing by the use of relative radiometric normalization. Three scenes of KOMPSAT-2 imagery were processed using the Multivariate Alteration Detection(MAD) method, which has a particular advantage of selecting PIFs(Pseudo Invariant Features) automatically by canonical correlation analysis. The scenes were then applied to detect disaster areas over Sendai, Japan, which was hit by a tsunami on 11 March 2011. The case study showed that the automatic extraction of changed areas after the tsunami using relatively normalized satellite data via the MAD method was done within a high accuracy level. In addition, the relative normalization of multi-temporal satellite imagery produced better results to rapidly map disaster-affected areas with an increased confidence level.

• Korean Journal of Soil Science and Fertilizer
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.16-22
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• 1997

Determination of N mineralization and nitrification potentials of selected Piedmont soils of North Carolina requires a better understanding of the influences of incorporated plant residues. The net N mineralization and nitrification were significantly influenced by the soil types and by plant species. The net N mineralization and nitrification of soils mixed with plant residues were consistently increased with successional incubation periods. The net mineralization and nitrification ranged from $9.77{\mu}g/g$ to $143.80{\mu}g/g$, and from $5.31{\mu}g/g$ to $145.66{\mu}g/g$ during the incubation periods, respectively. The net N mineralization was more influenced by NO3-N than by NH4-N. Overall, the greatest proportions of net N mineralization and nitrification occurred in Chewacla and Wehadkee and lowest in Enon and Mecklenburg. For the plant residues, the net N mineralization and nitrification were observed to be lowest in corn and highest in soybean. In a low-input agricultural systems, soybean may be planted as cover crop which may improve the nitrogen status of selected Piedmont soils of North Carolina.

• Korean Journal of Soil Science and Fertilizer
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• v.40 no.6
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• pp.488-494
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• 2007

Highland regions for farming are generally located in slopes higher than 7%, where alpine farming systems rely on highly input agriculture management with great amounts of chemical fertilizer and/or compost. Most of the uplands is thus needed to maintain environmentally friendly soil management due to its impact on soil erosion and runoff during heavy rainfall season. Therefore, the objective of this research is to evaluate the effect of reduction of soil erosion by applying four wild edible greens (fatsia, goat beard, leopard plant, and aster). The lysimeter experiment of slope gradients of 15, 30, and 45% was conducted in an alpine region of Hoengkye, Kangwon, in 2005 and 2006. In 2005, both amounts of soil loss from the experiment plots cultivated with goat beard and aster were lower than one with Chinese cabbage by about 50%. The amounts of runoff of goat beard and aster plots were also lower than those of the others. An increase in the slope gradients was accompanied with an increase in runoff. Of the plots of slope gradient of 15, 30, and 45%, S of goat beard plots was 52.50, 108.33, and 171.50 kg, respectively. Soil loss of Chinese cabbage was 2 to 3 times as high as those of goat beard plots. These results suggest that goat beard and aster plants with minimum tillage reduce soil erosion compared to Chinese cabbage cultivation.

• Journal of Plant Biotechnology
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• v.48 no.3
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• pp.124-130
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• 2021

Nitrate is an important nutrient and signaling molecule in plants that modulates the expression of many genes and regulates plant growth. In this study, we cover the research status of transcription factors related to the control of gene expression by nitrate signaling in higher plants. Nitrate reductase is a key enzyme in nitrogen assimilation, as it catalyzes the nitrate-to-nitrite reduction process in plants. A variety of factors, including nitrate, light, metabolites, phytohormones, low temperature, and drought, modulate the expression levels of nitrate reductase genes and nitrate reductase activity, which is consistent with the physiological role if. Recently, several transcription factors controlling the expression of nitrate reductase genes have been identified in higher plants. NODULE-INCEPTION-Like Proteins (NLPs) are transcription factors responsible for the nitrate-inducible expression of nitrate reductase genes. Since NLPs also control the nitrate-inducible expression of genes encoding the nitrate transporter, nitrite transporter, and nitrite reductase, the expression levels of nitrate reduction pathway-associated genes are coordinately modulated by NLPs in response to nitrate. Understanding the function of nitrate in plants will be useful to create crops with low nitrogen use.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.34 no.6_1
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• pp.1055-1066
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• 2018

Vegetation indices on the basis of optical characteristics of vegetation can represent various conditions such as canopy biomass and physiological activity. Those have been mostly developed with the large-scaled applications of multi-band optical sensors on-board satellites. However, the sensitivity of vegetation indices for detecting vegetation features will be different depending on the spatial scales. Therefore, in this study, the investigation of photochemical reflectance index (PRI), known as one of useful vegetation indices for detecting photosynthetic ability and vegetation stress, under the three spatial scales was conducted using multi-spectral camera installed in unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV),field spectrometer, and leaf reflectometer. In the leaf scale, diurnal PRI had minimum values at different local-time according to the compass direction of leaf face. It meant that each leaf in some moment had the different degree of light use efficiency (LUE). In early growth stage of crop, $PRI_{leaf}$ was higher than $PRI_{stands}$ and $PRI_{canopy}$ because the leaf scale is completely not governed by the vegetation cover fraction.In the stands and canopy scales, PRI showed a large spatial variability unlike normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI). However, the bias for the relationship between $PRI_{stands}$ and $PRI_{canopy}$ is lower than that in $NDVI_{stands}$ and $NDVI_{canopy}$. Our results will help to understand and utilize PRIs observed at different spatial scales.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.38 no.6_1
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• pp.1301-1314
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• 2022

Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) is utilized as an indicator to represent the vegetation condition on the land surface in various applications such as land cover, crop yield, agricultural drought, soil moisture, and forest disaster. However, satellite optical sensors for visible and infrared rays cannot see through the clouds, so the NDVI of the cloud pixel is not a valid value for the land surface. This study proposed a real-time correction of the underestimation noise for GEO-KOMPSAT-2A (GK2A) daily NDVI and made sure its feasibility through the quantitative comparisons with Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) NDVI and the qualitative interpretation of time-series changes. The underestimation noise was effectively corrected by the procedures such as the time-series correction considering vegetation phenology, the outlier removal using long-term climatology, and the gap filling using rigorous statistical methods. The correlation with MODIS NDVI was higher, and the difference was lower, showing a 32.7% improvement compared to the original NDVI product. The proposed method has an extensibility for use in other satellite products with some modification.

• Korean Journal of Soil Science and Fertilizer
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• v.45 no.2
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• pp.280-286
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• 2012

Clean energy farming is the agricultural activity to improve an efficiency of agricultural energy use and to replace fossil fuels. This study was carried out to establish the clean energy farming system in the controlled cultivation of vegetable crop (cucumber) adopting the biogas production facility. In order to design the clean energy farming system, mass and energy balance was analyzed between the controlled cultivation system and the biogas production facility. Net yearly heating energy demands ($E_{YHED}$) of forcing and semi-forcing cultivation types were 48,697 and $13.536Mcal\;10^{-1}$ in the controlled cultivation of vegetable cucumber. To cover these $E_{YHED}$, the pig slurry of 511 and $142m^3\;10a^{-1}$ (biogas volume of 9,482 and $2,636Nm^3\;10a^{-1}$, respectively, as 60% methane content) were needed in forcing and semi-forcing cultivation types. The pig slurry of $511m^3\;10a^{-1}$ caused N 1,788, $P_2O_5$ $511kg\;10a^{-1}$ in the forcing cultivation type, and the pig slurry of $142m^3\;10a^{-1}$ caused N 497, $P_2O_5$ $142kg\;10a^{-1}$ in the semi-forcing cultivation type. The daily heating energy demand ($E_{i,DHED}$) by the time scale analysis showed the minimum $E_{i,DHED}$ of $7.7Mcal\;10a^{-1}\;day^{-1}$, the maximum $E_{i,DHED}$ of $515.1Mcal\;10a^{-1}\;day^{-1}$, and the mean $E_{i,DHED}$ of 310.2 in the forcing cultivation type. And the minimum $E_{i,DHED}$, the maximum $E_{i,DHED}$, and the mean $E_{i,DHED}$ were 5.3, 258.0, and $165.1Mcal\;10a^{-1}\;day^{-1}$ in the semi-forcing cultivation type, respectively. Input scale of biogas production facility designed from the mean $E_{i,DHED}$ were 3.3 and $1.7m^3\;day^{-1}$ in the forcing and the semi-forcing cultivation type. The maximum $E_{i,DHED}$ gave the input scale of 5.4 and $2.7m^3\;day^{-1}$ in the forcing and the semi-forcing cultivation type.