• Journal of Soil and Groundwater Environment
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• v.27 no.5
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• pp.18-31
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• 2022

To evaluate the impact of drought on agriculture in N. Korea, SPI (standardized precipitation index) analysis was carried out by utilizing time-series precipitation data during 1996 - 2003 when severe drought occurred throughout the country. The SPI value was estimated to reach 12 in approximately 60% of the total period, indicating that agricultural productivity deteriorated rapidly due to the long-term drought. The national average drought cycle, based on SPI 12, was estimated as 32.5 months for the last 40 years. However, when examined on 20-year basis, the drought cycle was shortened by 10.6 months in last 20 years (30.3 months) as compared to previous 20 years (40.9 months). Annual crop production continued to increase mainly in rice and maize until the mid-1990s, but declined sharply thereafter due to the drought. After the drought period, the production of potatoes of which growth is more resistant to drought started to increase to the production level comparable to those of rice and soybean. It is expected that changes in the agricultural production environment in N. Korea will be inevitable due to the climate change. To this end, using the results of the drought cycle analysis, it is possible to analyze the changes in the agricultural production environment in N. Korea in the future.

• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.241-246
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• 2013

We have investigated drought periodicities occurred in Seoul to find out any indication of relationship between drought in Korea and solar activities. It is motivated, in view of solar-terrestrial connection, to search for an example of extreme weather condition controlled by solar activity. The periodicity of drought in Seoul has been re-examined using the wavelet transform technique as the consensus is not achieved yet. The reason we have chosen Seoul is because daily precipitation was recorded for longer than 200 years, which meets our requirement that analyses of drought frequency demand long-term historical data to ensure reliable estimates. We have examined three types of time series of the Effective Drought Index (EDI). We have directly analyzed EDI time series in the first place. And we have constructed and analyzed time series of histogram in which the number of days whose EDI is less than -1.5 for a given month of the year is given as a function of time, and one in which the number of occasions where EDI values of three consecutive days are all less than -1.5 is given as a function of time. All the time series data sets we analyzed are periodic. Apart from the annual cycle due to seasonal variations, periodicities shorter than the 11 year sunspot cycle, ~ 3, ~ 4, ~ 6 years, have been confirmed. Periodicities to which theses short periodicities (shorter than Hale period) may be corresponding are not yet known. Longer periodicities possibly related to Gleissberg cycles, ~ 55, ~ 120 years, can be also seen. However, periodicity comparable to the 11 year solar cycle seems absent in both EDI and the constructed data sets.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.34 no.1
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• pp.53-60
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• 2020

Due to global climate change, Korea is experiencing flooding and drought severely. It is hard to manage water resources because intensive precipitation during short periods and drought are commonly occurred in Korea, recently. Severe drought occurred in 2015 and 2017 in the islands, and coastal and inland areas in Korea, and the citizens experienced decreased water supply and emergency water service by using bottled water. Therefore, the Korean government provided additional governmental funds such as the grant of drought disaster. In this study, we tried to calculate the cost of water for drought response based on the cost of tap water for the regional local governments in Korea and the grant of drought disaster by the Ministry of the Interior and Safety in Korea, etc. The estimated costs of water for drought responses in coastal and inland areas which have a chance to apply alternative water sources such as brackish or seawater desalination and water reuse in Korea were higher than in other areas in Korea. Additionally, as the novel approach of drought response, the 300 ㎥/day-scale desalination vessel was suggested to provide desalinated water for the islands in Korea. The estimated expenses of water supply for the target island areas (Sinan-gun and Jindo-gun) by the desalination vessel was lower than those by emergency water service by using bottled water.

• Proceedings of the Korea Water Resources Association Conference
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• 2020.06a
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• pp.124-124
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• 2020

This study proposes a framework to evaluate extreme drought using the natural drought index and hot spot analysis. The study area was South Korea. Data were used from 59 automatic synoptic observing system stations. The variable infiltration capacity model was used for the period from 1981 to 2016. The natural drought index was constructed from precipitation, runoff and soil moisture data, which reflect the water cycle. The average interval, duration and severity of extreme drought events were determined following Run theory. The most extreme drought period occurred in 2014-2016, with 46 of 59 weather stations exhibition drought conditions and 78% exhibition extreme drought conditions. The Inje and Seosan station exhibited the longest drought duration of 6 months, and the most severe drought was 5 times higher than the extreme drought severity threshold. The hot spot analysis was used to explore the extreme drought conditions and showed an increasing trend in the middle and northeastern parts of South Korea. Overall, this study provides water resource managers with essential information about locations and significant trends of extreme drought.

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.49 no.1
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• pp.41-49
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• 2016

This study proposed a new drought index considering the accumulative pattern of daily rainfall, i.e., Rainfall Accumulation Drought Index (RADI). The RADI can be easily calculated at daily scale by comparing the long-term averaged cumulative rainfall to the observed cumulative rainfall for a specific duration. This study evaluated the availability of the RADI in the field of monitoring short-term and long-term droughts by investigating the spatial and temporal variability and the recurrence cycle of drought in South Korea. To present the short-term and long-term droughts, the various SPIs with different durations should be used in practice. However, the RADI can present and monitor both short-term and long-term droughts as a single index. By investigating the national average of the RADI, specific drought patterns of 20-year cycle were identified in this study. This study also proposed a five-level drought classification considering occurrence probability that would be a suitable alternative as a drought criterion for drought forecast/response.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Crop Science Conference
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• 2017.06a
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• pp.306-306
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• 2017

Screening for drought and salinity tolerance was undertaken for selected Philippine upland rice landraces during germinative and seedling stages to identify varieties which can potentially be grown in marginally dry and saline soils. While increasing PEG and NaCl concentrations caused obvious signs of injury to all rice genotypes, considerable varietal differences were noted in the nature of responses providing evidence that these genotypes possess broad intraspecific genetic variations for drought and salt tolerance. Inconsistent responses of these varieties during both growth stages highlight complexities involved in stress responses and underscore the futility of utilizing a single stage in the rice plant's life cycle for physiological screening. Notwithstanding these perplexing responses, G_Katiil and Ml-Pilit Tapul were observed to thrive relatively well despite increased salt and drought stress during early growth stages and may therefore possess genes needed in crop improvement efforts for drought and salinity tolerance. While these results do not reflect the entire spectrum of adaptive expression to drought and salinity stress during the life cycle of the upland rice plant, they nonetheless provide an easy, reliable and reproducible method for preliminary identification of drought and salt tolerant rice varieties.

• Journal of Korean Society on Water Environment
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.243-251
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• 2010

Evapotranspiration and rainfall-runoff are the major components of hydrological cycle and thereby the changes of them can directly affect the wetness/dryness or runoff characteristics of basins. In this study the wetness/dryness in Geum river basin are classified by dint of cumulative probability density function of monthly moisture index and the long term changes of them are analyzed based on climatic water balance concept. The drought events in Geum river basin are selected through evaluation of monthly moisture index and the various hydrological properties of them are investigated in detail. Also the trends of time-series of climatic water balance components are examined by Seasonal Kendall test and the variability of hydrological cycle in Geum river basin during the recent decade is inquired. It is judged that the results of this study can be contributed to establishment of the counter plan against the future drought events as the fundamental information.

• Journal of Korean Society on Water Environment
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• v.32 no.1
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• pp.70-79
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• 2016

Based on the soil moisture data assimilation suggested in the first paper (I), we estimated root zone soil moisture and evaluated drought severity using remotely sensed (RS) data. We tested the impacts of various spatial resolutions on soil moisture variations, and the model outputs showed that resolutions of more than 2-3 km resulted in over-/under-estimation of soil moisture values. Thus, we derived the 2 km resolution-scaled soil moisture dynamics and assessed the drought severity at the study sites (Chungmi-cheon sites 1 and 2) based on the estimated soil/root parameters and weather forcings. The drought indices at the sites were affected mainly by precipitation during the spring season, while both the precipitation and land surface characteristics influence the spatial distribution of drought during the rainy season. Also, the drought severity showed a periodic cycle, but additional research on drought cycles should be conducted using long-term historical data. Our proposed approach enabled estimation of daily root zone soil moisture dynamics and evaluation of drought severity at various spatial scales using MODIS data. Thus, this approach will facilitate efficient management of water resources.

• Proceedings of the Korea Water Resources Association Conference
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• 2010.05a
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• pp.1640-1644
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• 2010

In this study the wetness/dryness in Geum river basin are classified by dint of cumulative probability density function of monthly moisture index and the long term changes of them are analyzed based on climatic water balance concept. The drought events in Geum river basin are selected through evaluation of monthly moisture index and the various hydrological properties of them are investigated in detail. Also the trends of time-series of climatic water balance components are examined by Seasonal Kendall test and the variability of hydrological cycle in Geum river basin during the recent decade is inquired. It is judged that the results of this study can be contributed to establishment of the counter plan against the future drought events as the fundamental information.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.38 no.2
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• pp.153-166
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• 2022

Waterstorage is one of the factorsthat most directly represent the amount of available water resources. Since the effects of drought can be more intuitively expressed, it is also used in variousstudies for drought evaluation. In a recent study, hydrological drought was evaluated through information on observing reservoirs with optical images. The short observation cycle and diversity of optical satellites provide a lot of data. However, there are some limitations because it is vulnerable to the influence of weather or the atmospheric environment. Therefore, thisstudy attempted to conduct a study on estimating the drought index using Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) image with relatively little influence from the observation environment. We produced the waterbody of Baekgok and Chopyeong reservoirs using SAR images of Sentinel-1 satellites and calculated the Reservoir Area Drought Index (RADI), a hydrological drought index. In order to validate the applicability of RADI to drought monitoring, it was compared with Reservoir Storage Drought Index (RSDI) based on measured storage. The two indices showed a very high correlation with the correlation coefficient, r=0.87, Area Under curve, AUC=0.97. These results show the possibility of regional-scale hydrological drought monitoring of SAR-based RADI. As the number of available SAR images increases in the future, it is expected that the utilization of drought monitoring will also increase.