• Korean Journal of Ecology and Environment
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• v.51 no.1
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• pp.105-123
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• 2018

Currently, satellite images act as essential and important data in water resources, environment, and ecology as well as information of geographic information system. In this paper, we will investigate basic characteristics of satellite images, especially application examples in water resources. In recent years, researches on spatial and temporal characteristics of large-scale regions utilizing the advantages of satellite imagery have been actively conducted for fundamental hydrological components such as evapotranspiration, soil moisture and natural disasters such as drought, flood, and heavy snow. Furthermore, it is possible to analyze temporal and spatial characteristics such as vegetation characteristics, plant production, net primary production, turbidity of water bodies, chlorophyll concentration, and water quality by using various image information utilizing various sensor information of satellites. Korea is planning to launch a satellite for water resources and environment in the near future, so various researches are expected to be activated on this field.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Marine Environment & Energy
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.166-178
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• 2015

We investigated marine environmental characteristics of Goheung coastal areas in August where is known to be the first outbreak site of Cochlodinium polykrikoides (hereafter C. polykrikoides) blooms, based on the oceanographic data observed from 1993 to 2013 around the Korean southern coastal waters including Eastern China Sea by National Fisheries Research and Development Institute (NFRDI). The data of NOAA/NGSST satellite images as well as numerical simulation results by Seo et al. [2013] were also used for analysis. Water temperatures at the surface and bottom layers in Goheung coast, i.e. Narodo, were $25.0^{\circ}C$ and $23.7^{\circ}C$ so that they were higher than $23.8^{\circ}C$ and $19.4^{\circ}C$ in Geoje coast where is a reference site, respectively. In addition, salinities at the surface and bottom layers in Goheung coast were 31.78 psu and 31.98 psu so that they were a little higher than 31.54 psu at the surface but a little lower than 32.79 psu at the bottom in Geoje coast, respectively. That is, the differences in water temperature or salinity between the surface and bottom layers in Goheung coast in August were not large compared to Geoje coast. This suggests that stratification in Goheung coast in August is fairly weak or may not be established. In addition, the concentrations of DIN and DIP at the surface layer were 0.068 mg/L ($4.86{\mu}M$) and 0.015 mg/L ($5.14{\mu}M$) in Goheung coast while 0.072 mg/L ($5.14{\mu}M$) and 0.01 mg/L ($0.32{\mu}M$) in Geoje coast, so they did not indicate a meaningful difference. On the other hand, when C. polykrikoides blooms, water temperature and salinity in August at the station 317-22 ($31.5^{\circ}N$, $124^{\circ}E$) of the East China Sea, where is near the mouth of Yangtze River, were $27.8^{\circ}C$ and 31.61 psu, respectively. Thus, water temperature was much higher whereas salinity was almost similar compared to Goheung coast. Furthermore, concentrations of $NO_3-N$ and $PO_4-P$ in the East China Sea in August were remarkably high compared to Goheung coast. When C. polykrikoides blooms, according to not only the image data of satellites NOAA/NGSST but also numerical experiment results by Seo et al.[2013], the freshwater out of Yangtze River was judged to clearly affect the Korean southern coastal waters. Therefore, the supply of nutrients in terms of Yangtze River may greatly contribute to the outbreak of C. polykrikoides blooms in Goheung coast in summer.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Propulsion Engineers Conference
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• 2011.04a
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• pp.1-2
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• 2011

Hybrid rockets have lately attracted attention as a strong candidate of small, low cost, safe and reliable launch vehicles. A significant topic is that the first commercially sponsored space ship, SpaceShipOne vehicle chose a hybrid rocket. The main factors for the choice were safety of operation, system cost, quick turnaround, and thrust termination. In Japan, five universities including Hokkaido University and three private companies organized "Hybrid Rocket Research Group" from 1998 to 2002. Their main purpose was to downsize the cost and scale of rocket experiments. In 2002, UNISEC (University Space Engineering Consortium) and HASTIC (Hokkaido Aerospace Science and Technology Incubation Center) took over the educational and R&D rocket activities respectively and the research group dissolved. In 2008, JAXA/ISAS and eleven universities formed "Hybrid Rocket Research Working Group" as a subcommittee of the Steering Committee for Space Engineering in ISAS. Their goal is to demonstrate technical feasibility of lowcost and high frequency launches of nano/micro satellites into sun-synchronous orbits. Hybrid rockets use a combination of solid and liquid propellants. Usually the fuel is in a solid phase. A serious problem of hybrid rockets is the low regression rate of the solid fuel. In single port hybrids the low regression rate below 1 mm/s causes large L/D exceeding a hundred and small fuel loading ratio falling below 0.3. Multi-port hybrids are a typical solution to solve this problem. However, this solution is not the mainstream in Japan. Another approach is to use high regression rate fuels. For example, a fuel regression rate of 4 mm/s decreases L/D to around 10 and increases the loading ratio to around 0.75. Liquefying fuels such as paraffins are strong candidates for high regression fuels and subject of active research in Japan too. Nakagawa et al. in Tokai University employed EVA (Ethylene Vinyl Acetate) to modify viscosity of paraffin based fuels and investigated the effect of viscosity on regression rates. Wada et al. in Akita University employed LTP (Low melting ThermoPlastic) as another candidate of liquefying fuels and demonstrated high regression rates comparable to paraffin fuels. Hori et al. in JAXA/ISAS employed glycidylazide-poly(ethylene glycol) (GAP-PEG) copolymers as high regression rate fuels and modified the combustion characteristics by changing the PEG mixing ratio. Regression rate improvement by changing internal ballistics is another stream of research. The author proposed a new fuel configuration named "CAMUI" in 1998. CAMUI comes from an abbreviation of "cascaded multistage impinging-jet" meaning the distinctive flow field. A CAMUI type fuel grain consists of several cylindrical fuel blocks with two ports in axial direction. The port alignment shifts 90 degrees with each other to make jets out of ports impinge on the upstream end face of the downstream fuel block, resulting in intense heat transfer to the fuel. Yuasa et al. in Tokyo Metropolitan University employed swirling injection method and improved regression rates more than three times higher. However, regression rate distribution along the axis is not uniform due to the decay of the swirl strength. Aso et al. in Kyushu University employed multi-swirl injection to solve this problem. Combinations of swirling injection and paraffin based fuel have been tried and some results show very high regression rates exceeding ten times of conventional one. High fuel regression rates by new fuel, new internal ballistics, or combination of them require faster fuel-oxidizer mixing to maintain combustion efficiency. Nakagawa et al. succeeded to improve combustion efficiency of a paraffin-based fuel from 77% to 96% by a baffle plate. Another effective approach some researchers are trying is to use an aft-chamber to increase residence time. Better understanding of the new flow fields is necessary to reveal basic mechanisms of regression enhancement. Yuasa et al. visualized the combustion field in a swirling injection type motor. Nakagawa et al. observed boundary layer combustion of wax-based fuels. To understand detailed flow structures in swirling flow type hybrids, Sawada et al. (Tohoku Univ.), Teramoto et al. (Univ. of Tokyo), Shimada et al. (ISAS), and Tsuboi et al. (Kyushu Inst. Tech.) are trying to simulate the flow field numerically. Main challenges are turbulent reaction, stiffness due to low Mach number flow, fuel regression model, and other non-steady phenomena. Oshima et al. in Hokkaido University simulated CAMUI type flow fields and discussed correspondence relation between regression distribution of a burning surface and the vortex structure over the surface.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Surveying, Geodesy, Photogrammetry and Cartography
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• v.37 no.3
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• pp.199-208
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• 2019

As the number of available satellites increases and technology advances, image information outputs are becoming increasingly diverse and a large amount of data is accumulating. In this study, we propose a change detection method for high-resolution satellite images that uses transfer learning and a deep learning network to overcome the limit caused by insufficient training data via the use of pre-trained information. The deep learning network used in this study comprises convolutional layers to extract the spatial and spectral information and convolutional long-short term memory layers to analyze the time series information. To use the learned information, the two initial convolutional layers of the change detection network are designed to use learned values from 40,000 patches of the ISPRS (International Society for Photogrammertry and Remote Sensing) dataset as initial values. In addition, 2D (2-Dimensional) and 3D (3-dimensional) kernels were used to find the optimized structure for the high-resolution satellite images. The experimental results for the KOMPSAT-3A (KOrean Multi-Purpose SATllite-3A) satellite images show that this change detection method can effectively extract changed/unchanged pixels but is less sensitive to changes due to shadow and relief displacements. In addition, the change detection accuracy of two sites was improved by using 3D kernels. This is because a 3D kernel can consider not only the spatial information but also the spectral information. This study indicates that we can effectively detect changes in high-resolution satellite images using the constructed image information and deep learning network. In future work, a pre-trained change detection network will be applied to newly obtained images to extend the scope of the application.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.38 no.5_1
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• pp.447-460
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• 2022

It is well known that satellite synthetic aperture radar interferometry (InSAR) has been widely used for the observation of surface displacement owing to earthquakes, volcanoes, and subsidence very precisely. In wetlands where vegetation exists on the surface of the water, it is possible to create a water level change map with high spatial resolution over a wide area using the InSAR technique. Currently, a number of imaging radar satellites are in operation, and most of them support a ScanSAR mode observation to gather information over a large area at once. The Cienaga Grande de Santa Marta (CGSM) wetland, located in northern Colombia, is a vast wetland developed along the Caribbean coast. The CGSM wetlands face serious environmental threats from human activities such as reclamation for agricultural uses and residential purposes as well as natural causes such as sea level rise owing to climate change. Various restoration and protection plans have been conducted to conserve these invaluable environments in recognition of the ecological importance of the CGSM wetlands. Monitoring of water level changes in wetland is very important resources to understand the hydrologic characteristics and the in-situ water level gauge stations are usually utilized to measure the water level. Although it can provide very good temporal resolution of water level information, it is limited to fully understand flow pattern owing to its very coarse spatial resolution. In this study, we evaluate the L-band ALOS-2 PALSAR-2 ScanSAR mode to observe the water level change over the wide wetland area using the radar interferometric technique. In order to assess the quality of the interferometric product in the aspect of spatial resolution and coherence, we also utilized ALOS-2 PALSAR-2 stripmap high-resolution mode observations.

• Korean Journal of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.28-36
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• 2023

Solar radiation that is measured at relatively small number of weather stations is one of key inputs to crop models for estimation of crop productivity. Solar radiation products derived from GK-2A and Himawari 8 satellite data have become available, which would allow for preparation of input data to crop models, especially for assessment of crop productivity under an agrivoltaic system where crop and power can be produced at the same time. The objective of this study was to compare the degree of agreement between the solar radiation products obtained from those satellite data. The sub hourly products for solar radiation were collected to prepare their daily summary for the period from May to October in 2020 during which both satellite products for solar radiation were available. Root mean square error (RMSE) and its normalized error (NRMSE) were determined for daily sum of solar radiation. The cumulative values of solar radiation for the study period were also compared to represent the impact of the errors for those products on crop growth simulations. It was found that the data product from the Himawari 8 satellite tended to have smaller values of RMSE and NRMSE than that from the GK-2A satellite. The Himawari 8 satellite product had smaller errors at a large number of weather stations when the cumulative solar radiation was compared with the measurements. This suggests that the use of Himawari 8 satellite products would cause less uncertainty than that of GK2-A products for estimation of crop yield. This merits further studies to apply the Himawari 8 satellites to estimation of solar power generation as well as crop yield under an agrivoltaic system.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.39 no.3
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• pp.363-370
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• 2023

Various earth observation satellites need to provide accurate and high-quality data after launch. To maintain and enhance the quality of satellite data, it is crucial to employ a cross-calibration process that accounts for differences in sensor characteristics, such as the spectral band adjustment factor (SBAF). In this study, we utilized Landsat-8 and Sentinel-2A satellite imagery collected from desert sites in Libya4, Algeria3, and Mauritania2 among pseudo-invariant calibration sites to calculate and apply SBAF, thereby compensating the uncertainties arising from variations in bandwidths. We quantitatively compared the reflectance differences based on the similarity of bandwidths, including Blue, Green, Red, and both the near-infrared (NIR) narrow, and NIR bands of Sentinel-2A. Following the application of SBAF, significant results with reflectance differences of approximately 1% or less were observed for all bands except NIR. In the case of the Sentinel-2A NIR band, it exhibited a significantly larger bandwidth difference compared to the NIR narrow band. However, after applying SBAF, the reflectance difference fell within the acceptable error range (5%) of 1-2%. It indicates that SBAF can be applied even when there is a substantial difference in the bandwidths of the two sensors, particularly in situations where satellite utilization is limited. Therefore, it was determined that SBAF could be applied even when the bandwidth difference between the two sensors is large in a situation where satellite utilization is limited. It is expected to be helpful in research utilizing the quality and continuity of satellite data.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.39 no.5_4
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• pp.1173-1183
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• 2023

Over the past 20 years, Korea's overall import and export cargo volume has increased at an average annual rate of approximately 5.3%. About 99% of the cargo is still being transported by sea. Due to recent increases in maritime cargo volume, congestion in maritime logistics has become challenging due to factors such as the COVID-19 pandemic and conflicts. Continuous monitoring of ports has become crucial. Various ground observation systems and Automatic Identification System (AIS) data have been utilized for monitoring ports and conducting numerous preliminary studies for the efficient operation of container terminals and cargo volume prediction. However, small and developing countries' ports face difficulties in monitoring due to environmental issues and aging infrastructure compared to large ports. Recently, with the increasing utility of artificial satellites, preliminary studies have been conducted using satellite imagery for continuous maritime cargo data collection and establishing ocean monitoring systems in vast and hard-to-reach areas. This study aims to visually detect ships docked at berths in the Busan New Port using high-resolution satellite imagery and quantitatively evaluate berth utilization rates. By utilizing high-resolution satellite imagery from Compact Advanced Satellite 500-1 (CAS500-1), Korea Multi-Purpose satellite-3 (KOMPSAT-3), PlanetScope, and Sentinel-2A, ships docked within the port berths were visually detected. The berth utilization rate was calculated using the total number of ships that could be docked at the berths. The results showed variations in berth utilization rates on June 2, 2022, with values of 0.67, 0.7, and 0.59, indicating fluctuations based on the time of satellite image capture. On June 3, 2022, the value remained at 0.7, signifying a consistent berth utilization rate despite changes in ship types. A higher berth utilization rate indicates active operations at the berth. This information can assist in basic planning for new ship operation schedules, as congested berths can lead to longer waiting times for ships in anchorages, potentially resulting in increased freight rates. The duration of operations at berths can vary from several hours to several days. The results of calculating changes in ships at berths based on differences in satellite image capture times, even with a time difference of 4 minutes and 49 seconds, demonstrated variations in ship presence. With short observation intervals and the utilization of high-resolution satellite imagery, continuous monitoring within ports can be achieved. Additionally, utilizing satellite imagery to monitor changes in ships at berths in minute increments could prove useful for small and developing country ports where harbor management is not well-established, offering valuable insights and solutions.