• Asian Journal of Atmospheric Environment
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.57-65
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• 2015

We measured the concentrations of five aromatic hydrocarbons (benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, m,p-xylene, and styrene) in the atmosphere during four seasonal campaigns at Deokjeok and Jeju Islands in the Yellow Sea from October 2005 to June 2006. Toluene was the most abundant aromatic hydrocarbon, with median of 0.24 ppb at Deokjeok and 0.20 ppb at Jeju, followed by benzene (0.21 ppb, 0.15 ppb) and m,p-xylene (0.06 ppb, 0.06 ppb). Aromatic hydrocarbon measurements exhibited the typical seasonality of the major emission sources, such as vehicle exhaust, solvent evaporation, and regional circulation patterns. The ratios of m,p-xylene/ethylbenzene of 1.57 at Deokjeok and 1.05 at Jeju reflected the degree of proximity to outflows of each source region, South Korea and China. The toluene/benzene ratios of 1.0 were consistently both on field observations and on the 3-D chemical model simulation, which is slightly higher than that in the Western Pacific area. It implied that the air over the Yellow Sea was influenced to a great extent by the surrounding areas. We confirmed that current emission inventories of aromatic hydrocarbons in Northeast Asia reasonably reproduced temporal and spatial variations of toluene and benzene over the Yellow Sea.

• Korean Journal of Organic Agriculture
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• v.31 no.3
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• pp.167-189
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• 2023

Korea has become the highest nitrogen balance (228 kg/ha) among 34 OECD member countries, and has the stigma of being a 'Nutrient overload country' as of 2019. Accordingly, research on the derivation and utilization of nutrient balance indicators and the 'regional nutrient management system' are being promoted to improve Korea's nutrient balance. It is necessary to support these policies and studies, form a public consensus on improving the nutrient balance, and evaluate the function of the public benefit. This paper aims to estimate the public benefit value of improving the nutrient balance based on an analysis of consumers' willingness to pay and recognition of Korea's nutrient excess for 600 consumers nationwide. As results, 21.2% of the respondents said they were aware of excessive nutrients in Korea, and 76.7% of the respondents said they were aware of the need for nutrient management. The average amount of intention to pay for the improvement of three pollution (soil, water quality, and air) that can occur due to a nutrient overload was ￦2,321.1 for soil pollution improvement, ￦2,391.2 for water pollution improvement, and ￦2,377.9 for air pollution improvement. The average willingness to pay for the three pollution reduction was ￦6,002.3. These results are expected to be used to form a public consensus on the balance of payments and to establish measures to enhance public interest values in the future.

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.42 no.11
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• pp.921-931
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• 2009

For the assessment of climate change impacts for the Byeongseong stream, CGCM 3.1 T63 is selected as future climate information. The projections come from CGCM used to simulate the GHG emission scenario known as A2. Air temperature and precipitation information from the GCM simulations are converted to regional scale data using the statistical downscaling method known as MSPG. Downscaled climate data from GCM are then used as the input data for the SWAT model to generate regional runoff and water quality estimates in the Byeongseong stream. As a result of simple sensitivity analysis, the increase of CO2 concentration leads to increase water yield through reduction of evapotranspiration and increase of soil water. Hydrologic responses to climate change are in phase with precipitation change. Climate change is expected to reduce water yields in the period of 2021-2030. In the period of 2051-2060, stream flow is expected to be reduced in spring season and increased in summer season. While soil losses are also in phase with water yields, nutrient discharges (i.e., total nitrogen) are not always in phase with precipitation change. However, it should be noted that there are a lot of uncertainties in such multiple-step analysis used to convert climate information from GCM-based future climate projections into hydrologic information.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.36 no.3
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• pp.210-221
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• 2015

The terrain features and surface characteristics are the most important elements not only in meteorological modeling but also in air quality modeling. The diurnal evolution of local climate over complex terrain may be significantly controlled by the ground irregularities. Such topographic features can affect a thermally driven flow, either directly by causing changes in the wind direction or indirectly, by inducing significant variations in the ground temperature. Over a complex terrain, these variations are due to the nonuniform distribution of solar radiation, which is highly determined by the ground geometrical characteristics, i.e. slope and orientation. Therefore, the accuracy of prediction of regional scale circulation is strong associated with the accuracy of land-use and topographic information in meso-scale circulation assessment. The objective of this work is a numerical simulation using MM5-A2C model with the detailed topography and land-use information as the surface boundary conditions of the air flow field in mountain regions. Meteorological conditions estimated by MM5-A2C command a great influence on the dispersion of mountain areas with the reasonable feature of topography where there is an important difference in orographic forcing.

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.54 no.12
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• pp.1255-1263
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• 2021

While it could become an alternative water resource, fog could undermine traffic safety and operational performance of infrastructures. To reduce such adverse impacts, it is necessary to have spatially continuous fog risk information. In this work, tree-based machine-learning models were developed in order to quantify fog risks with routine meteorological observations alone. The Extreme Gradient Boosting (XGB), Light Gradient Boosting (LGB), and Random Forests (RF) were chosen for the regional fog models using operational weather and visibility observations within the Jeollabuk-do province. Results showed that RF seemed to show the most robust performance to categorize between fog and non-fog situations during the training and evaluation period of 2017-2019. While the LGB performed better than in predicting fog occurrences than the others, its false alarm ratio was the highest (0.695) among the three models. The predictability of the three models considerably declined when applying them for an independent period of 2020, potentially due to the distinctively enhanced air quality in the year under the global lockdown. Nonetheless, even in 2020, the three models were all able to produce fog risk information consistent with the spatial variation of observed fog occurrences. This work suggests that the tree-based machine learning models could be used as tools to find locations with relatively high fog risks.

• Journal of Korean Society for Atmospheric Environment
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• v.33 no.1
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• pp.31-44
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• 2017

The aim of this study is to evaluate the accuracy and variability of the oak pollen concentrations over the Seoul metropolitan region (SMR) simulated by the Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ)-based pollen dispersion model, which is the CMAQ-pollen model integrated with the improved oak pollen emission model(PEM-oak). The PEM-oak model developed is based on hourly emission flux parameterization that includes the effects of plant-specific release, meteorological adjustment, and diurnal variations of oak pollen concentrations. A 33 day-run for oak pollen simulation was conducted by the CMAQ-pollen model with a 3 km spatial resolution for the SMR during the 2014 spring pollen season. Modeled concentrations were evaluated against the hourly measurements at three Burkard sampling sites. Temporal variations of oak concentrations were largely well represented by the model, but the quantitative difference between simulations and measurements was found to be significant in some periods. The model results also showed that large variations in oak pollen concentrations existed in time and space and high concentrations in the SMR were closely associated with the regional transport under strong wind condition. This study showed the effective application of the CMAQ-pollen modeling system to simulate oak pollen concentration in the SMR. Our results could be helpful in providing information on allergenic pollen exposure. Further efforts are needed to further understand the oak pollen release characteristics such as interannual variation of the oak pollen productivity and its spatio-temporal flowering timing.

• Journal of the Korean Association of Geographic Information Studies
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.91-102
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• 2007

To anticipate and respond to harmful algae produced in a big artificial lake like Daecheong reservoir, development of a regional analysis computer system using GIS or RS technique is needed in addition to biological and chemical research. The purpose of this study is to develop a cyanobacterial blooming prediction model to prevent harmful algae produced in Daecheong reservoir and construct an early forecasting system based on GIS. For this purpose this paper examines previous studies related to the relationship between cyanobacteria and environmental factors in Daecheong reservoir and selects precipitation and air temperature as two important environmental factors for the development of cyanobacterial blooming prediction model. Data used in this study are water quality and weather data for three water regions in Daecheong reservoir between 2000 and 2004. Based on qualitative correlation analysis between cyanobacteria and environmental factors, this paper presents a Rump model which enables us to predict cyanobacteria in water regions of Daecheong reservoir. Under this model the prediction of initial occurrence time and growth period of cyanobacteria are possible. The model is also applied to the GIS-based early forecasting system for cyanobacteria, and finally a GIS which can predict cyanobacteria produced in Daecheong reservoir and can manage the related data is developed.

• Journal of Environmental Health Sciences
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• v.49 no.6
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• pp.362-371
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• 2023

Background: PM_2.5 pollution has been a persistent problem in South Korea, with concentrations consistently exceeding World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines. The aging of the population in the country further exacerbates the health impacts of PM_2.5 since older adults are more susceptible to the adverse effects of air pollution. Objectives: This study aims to evaluate how the health impact (premature death) due to long-term exposure to PM_2.5 in South Korea could change in the future according to the trend of change in the country's population structure. Methods: The study employs a relative risk function, which accounts for age-specific relative risks, to assess the changes in premature deaths by age and region at the average annual PM_2.5 concentration for 2022 and at PM_2.5 concentration improvement levels. Premature deaths were estimated using the Global Exposure Mortality Model (GEMM). Results: The findings indicate that the increase in premature deaths resulting from the projected population structure changes up to 2050 would significantly outweigh the health benefits (reduction in premature deaths) compared to 2012. This is primarily attributed to the rising number of premature deaths among the elderly due to population aging. Furthermore, the study suggests that the effectiveness of the current domestic PM_2.5 standard would be halved by 2050 due to the increasing impact of population aging on PM_2.5-related mortality. Conclusions: The study highlights the importance of considering trends in population structure when evaluating the health benefits of air pollution reduction measures. By comparing and evaluating the health benefits in reflection of changes in population structure to the predicted PM_2.5 concentration improvements at the provincial level, a more comprehensive assessment of regional air quality management strategies can be achieved.

• Journal of Environmental Health Sciences
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• v.47 no.5
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• pp.486-495
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• 2021

Background: Particulate matter (PM) is one of the leading causes of premature death worldwide. Previous studies in South Korea have applied a relative risk calculated from Western populations when estimating the disease burden attributable to PM. However, the relative risk of PM on health outcomes may not be the same across different countries or regions. Objectives: This study aimed to estimate the premature deaths and socioeconomic costs attributable to long-term exposure to PM in South Korea. We considered not only the difference in PM concentration between regions, but also the difference in relative risk. Methods: National monitoring data of PM concentrations was obtained, and missing values were imputed using the AERMOD model and linear regression model. As a surrogate for relative risk, hazard ratios (HRs) of PM for cardiovascular and respiratory mortality were estimated using the National Health Insurance Service-National Sample Cohort. The nation was divided into five areas (metropolitan, central, southern, south-eastern, and Gangwon-do Province regions). The number of PM attributable deaths in 2018 was calculated at the district level. The socioeconomic cost was derived by multiplying the number of deaths and the statistical value of life. Results: The average PM₁₀ concentration for 2014~2018 was 45.2 ㎍/m³. The association between long-term exposure to PM₁₀ and mortality was heterogeneous between areas. When applying area-specific HRs, 23,811 premature deaths from cardiovascular and respiratory disease in 2018 were attributable to PM₁₀ (reference level 20 ㎍/m³). The corresponding socioeconomic cost was about 31 trillion won. These estimated values were higher than that when applying nationwide HRs. Conclusions: This study is the first research to estimate the premature mortality caused by long-term exposure to PM using relative risks derived from the national population. This study will help precisely identify the national and regional health burden attributed to PM and establish the priorities of air quality policy.

• Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
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• v.30 no.5
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• pp.271-296
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• 2021

Since the thermal stratification in a reservoir inhibits the vertical mixing of the upper and lower layers and causes the formation of a hypoxia layer and the enhancement of nutrients release from the sediment, changes in the stratification structure of the reservoir according to future climate change are very important in terms of water quality and aquatic ecology management. This study was aimed to develop a data-driven inflow water temperature prediction model for Daecheong Reservoir (DR), and to predict future inflow water temperature and the stratification structure of DR considering future climate scenarios of Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP). The random forest (RF)regression model (NSE 0.97, RMSE 1.86℃, MAPE 9.45%) developed to predict the inflow temperature of DR adequately reproduced the statistics and variability of the observed water temperature. Future meteorological data for each RCP scenario predicted by the regional climate model (HadGEM3-RA) was input into RF model to predict the inflow water temperature, and a three-dimensional hydrodynamic model (AEM3D) was used to predict the change in the future (2018~2037, 2038~2057, 2058~2077, 2078~2097) stratification structure of DR due to climate change. As a result, the rates of increase in air temperature and inflow water temperature was 0.14~0.48℃/10year and 0.21~0.41℃/10year,respectively. As a result of seasonal analysis, in all scenarios except spring and winter in the RCP 2.6, the increase in inflow water temperature was statistically significant, and the increase rate was higher as the carbon reduction effort was weaker. The increase rate of the surface water temperature of the reservoir was in the range of 0.04~0.38℃/10year, and the stratification period was gradually increased in all scenarios. In particular, when the RCP 8.5 scenario is applied, the number of stratification days is expected to increase by about 24 days. These results were consistent with the results of previous studies that climate change strengthens the stratification intensity of lakes and reservoirs and prolonged the stratification period, and suggested that prolonged water temperature stratification could cause changes in the aquatic ecosystem, such as spatial expansion of the low-oxygen layer, an increase in sediment nutrient release, and changed in the dominant species of algae in the water body.