• Journal of Soil and Groundwater Environment
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• v.24 no.5
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• pp.31-41
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• 2019

In 2013, the Ministry of Environment in South Korea promulgated a new regulatory bulletin that contained revised enforcement ordinance on soil management protocols. The bulletin recommends the use of Universal Soil Loss Equation (USLE) for the soil erosion estimation, but USLE has limited applicability in prediction of soil erosion because it does not allow direct estimation of actual mass of soil erosion. Therefore, there is a great need of revising the protocol to allow direct comparison between the measured and estimated values of soil erosion. The Korean Soil Loss Equation (KORSLE) was developed recently and used to estimate soil loss in two fields as an alternative to existing USLE model. KORSLE was applied to estimate monthly rainfall erosivity indices as well as temporal variation in potential soil loss. The estimated potential soil loss by KORSLE was adjusted with correction factor for direct comparison with measured soil erosion. The result was reasonable since Nash-Stucliff efficiency were 0.8020 in calibration and 0.5089 in validation. The results suggest that KORSLE is an appropriate model as an alternative to USLE to predict soil erosion at field scale.

• Journal of Soil and Groundwater Environment
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• v.22 no.6
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• pp.29-36
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• 2017

Universal soil loss equation (USLE) has been frequently employed to estimate potential soil loss in land since it was developed based on the statewide data measured and collected in the United States. The equation is an empirical model mainly used for U.S. soil, thus it has been recently modified to reflect Korean soil conditions and named as Korean Soil Loss Equation (KORSLE). The modified equation was implemented in ArcGIS software, and used for estimation of potential soil loss from 2003 to 2016 in the thirty-eight Water Protection Districts. Five out of the thirty-eight districts were identified as the area of potential soil erosion most severly. In those five districts, potential soil erosion were estimated to be more than 50 Mg/ha/year that requires site investigation under supervision of the Korean Ministry of Environment. Distinctive site characteristics were found in the potential soil loss estimation such that the districts of low potential soil loss had low five factors in the aggregate. However, if one of more factors are dominantly large, the potential soil loss significantly increased. This study provides a useful tool to identify the potential areas for soil erosion and the important factors that play an important role in the estimation process.