• Ecology and Resilient Infrastructure
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.135-142
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• 2023

A various technology of remote sensing and image analysis are applied to study landscape changes and their influencing factors in stream corridors. We developed a method to detect landscape changes over time by calculating the optical index using multispectral images taken from satellites at various time points, calculating the threshold to delineate the boundaries of water bodies, and creating binarized maps into land and water areas. This method was applied to the upstream reach of the weirs in the Geumgang River to track changes in the sandbar formed by the opening of the weir gate. First, we collected multispectral images with a resolution of 10 m × 10 m taken from the Sentinel-2 satellite at various times before and after the opening of the dam in the Geumgang River. The normalized difference water index (NDWI) was calculated using the green light and near-infrared bands from the collected images. The Otsu's threshold of NDWI calculated to delineate the boundary of the water body ranged from -0.0573 to 0.1367. The boundary of the water area determined by remote sensing matched the boundary in the actual image. A map binarized into water and land areas was created using NDWI and the Otsu's threshold. According to these results of the developed method, it was estimated that a total of 379.7 ha of new sandbar was formed by opening the three weir floodgates from 2017 to 2021 in the longitudinal range from Baekje Weir to Daecheong Dam on the Geumgang River. The landscape detection method developed in this study is evaluated as a useful method that can obtain objective results with few resources over a wide spatial and temporal range.

• Korean Journal of Environmental Biology
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• v.42 no.2
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• pp.193-206
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• 2024

This study aimed to quantify changes in forest cover and carbon storage of Korean Peninsular during the last two decades by integrating field measurement, satellite remote sensing, and modeling approaches. Our analysis based on 30-m Landsat data revealed that the forested area in Korean Peninsular had diminished significantly by 478,334 ha during the period of 2000-2019, with South Korea and North Korea contributing 51.3% (245,725 ha) and 48.6% (232,610 ha) of the total change, respectively. This comparable pattern of forest loss in both South Korea and North Korea was likely due to reduced forest deforestation and degradation in North Korea and active forest management activity in South Korea. Time series of above ground biomass (AGB) in the Korean Peninsula showed that South and North Korean forests increased their total AGB by 146.4Tg C (AGB at 2020=357.9Tg C) and 140.3Tg C (AGB at 2020=417.4Tg C), respectively, during the last two decades. This could be translated into net AGB increases in South and North Korean forests from 34.8 and 29.4 Mg C ha^-1 C to 58.9(+24.1) and 44.2(+14.8) Mg C ha^-1, respectively. It indicates that South Korean forests are more productive during the study period. Thus, they have sequestered more carbon. Our approaches and results can provide useful information for quantifying national scale forest cover and carbon dynamics. Our results can be utilized for supporting forest restoration planning in North Korea

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.57 no.8
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• pp.519-532
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• 2024

This study aims to investigate stream drying phenomena and determine ecological flow in upper Jungnangcheon basin(118.2 km²) of Han River basin. Satellite imagery was used to compare historical and current land cover, and field surveys, including fish surveys, were conducted to assess stream drying conditions. Satellite image analysis revealed a significant increase in impervious surface area due to the expansion of residential and commercial areas. Streamflow and water quality measurements at Hannae Bridge in study area during the dry season showed and average minimum flow of 1.39 m³/sec and elevated SS levels, indicating poor water quality for T-P and TOC. The representative fish species in the study area was P.herzi. Optimal habitat suitability index for depth, velocity, and substrate were 0.3~0.5 m, 0.1~0.3 m/sec, and sand, respectively. Using PHABSIM, the ecological flow for the study area was estimated as 1.00 m³/sec. The derived ecological flow can be used as a reference flow for stream drying mitigation strategies.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.37 no.5_1
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• pp.1177-1186
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• 2021

As the Arctic melt ponds play an important role in determining the interannual variation of the sea ice extent and changes in the Arctic environment, it is crucial to monitor the Arctic melt ponds with high accuracy. Ice, Cloud, and Land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2), which is the NASA's latest altimeter satellite based on the green laser (532 nm), observes the global surface elevation. When compared to the CryoSat-2 altimetry satellite whose along-track resolution is 250 m, ICESat-2 is highly expected to provide much more detailed information about Arctic melt ponds thanks to its high along-track resolution of 70 cm. The basic products of ICESat-2 are the surface height and the number of reflected photons. To aggregate the neighboring information of a specific ICESat-2 photon, the segments of photons with 10 m length were used. The standard deviation of the height and the total number of photons were calculated for each segment. As the melt ponds have the smoother surface than the sea ice, the lower variation of the height over melt ponds can make the melt ponds distinguished from the sea ice. When the melt ponds were extracted, the number of photons per segment was used to classify the melt ponds covered with open-water and specular ice. As photons are much more absorbed in the water-covered melt pondsthan the melt ponds with the specular ice, the number of photons persegment can distinguish the water- and ice-covered ponds. As a result, the suggested melt pond detection method was able to classify the sea ice, water-covered melt ponds, and ice-covered melt ponds. A qualitative analysis was conducted using the Sentinel-2 optical imagery. The suggested method successfully classified the water- and ice-covered ponds which were difficult to distinguish with Sentinel-2 optical images. Lastly, the pros and cons of the melt pond detection using satellite altimetry and optical images were discussed.

• Journal of The Geomorphological Association of Korea
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.59-71
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• 2012

This research was carried out to analyze long-term shoreline change on Busan Songjeong Beach using multi-temporal remote sensed data, GPS survey data and grain size analysis. As a result of multi-temporal satellite imagery analysis, the beach was stable status till early 2000s, but the erosion occurred over whole beach after the construction of shore protection road since 2000. In the result of DEM analysis, the elevation of beach reduced and the slope of berm increased after construction of shore protection road along the coast, this means the erosion environment was dominant on the beach. But the sedimentation was slightly stronger than the erosion in northern region of the beach, then the slope of berm was gentle. In the result of grain size analysis using in-situ samples, the coarsening-trend was found in southeastern region (Line E) of the beach, it is caused by strong wave energy from the outer sea. Consequently, major causes of the beach erosion in the study area were the interception of sand supply from a dune owing to shore protection road construction and scouring phenomenon by strong wave energy in southeastern region of the beach. If the topographic or artificial change will not occur in the future, the erosion in this area will continue. Therefore the prevention measures are required.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.36 no.2_2
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• pp.277-292
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• 2020

The purpose of this study is to propose the possibility of precise surface sedimentary facies classification and a more accurate classification method by generating the large-scale map of surface sedimentary facies based on UAV data and object-based image analysis (OBIA) for Hwang-do tidal flat in Cheonsu bay. The very high resolution UAV data extracted factors that affect the classification of surface sedimentary facies, such as RGB ortho imagery, Digital elevation model (DEM), and tidal channel density, and analyzed the principal components of surface sedimentary facies through statistical analysis methods. Based on principal components, input data to be used for classification of surface sedimentary facies were divided into three cases such as (1) visible band spectrum, (2) topographical elevation and tidal channel density, (3) visible band spectrum and topographical elevation, tidal channel density. The object-based image analysis classification method was applied to map the classification of surface sedimentary facies according to conditions of input data. The surface sedimentary facies could be classified into a total of six sedimentary facies following the folk classification criteria. In addition, the use of visible band spectrum, topographical elevation, and tidal channel density enabled the most effective classification of surface sedimentary facies with a total accuracy of 63.04% and the Kappa coefficient of 0.54.

• Korean Journal of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.17-24
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• 2008

This study was performed to estimate non-$CO_2$ greenhouse gases (i.e., GHGs) emission from biomass burning at a local scale. Estimation of non-$CO_2$ GHGs emission was conducted using Landsat TM satellite imagery in order to assess the damage degree in burnt area and its effect on non-$CO_2$ GHGs emission. This approach of estimation was based on the protocol of the 2003 IPCC Guidelines. In this study, we used one of the most severe fire cases occurred Samcheock in April, 2004. Landsat TM satellite imageries of pre- and post-fire were used 1) to calculate delta normalized burn ratio (dNBR) for analyzing burnt area and burn severity of the Samcheok large-fire and 2) to quantify non-$CO_2$ GHGs emission from different size of the burnt area and the damage degree. The analysis of dNBR of the Samcheok large-fire indicated that the total burnt area was 16,200ha and the size of the burnt area differed with the burn severity: out of the total burnt area, the burn severities of Low (dNBR < 152), Moderate (dNBR = 153-190), and High (dNBR = 191-255) were 35%, 33%, and 32%, respectively. It was estimated that the burnt areas of coniferous forest, deciduous forest, and mixed forest were about 11,506ha (77%), 453ha (3%), and 2,978ha (20%), respectively. The magnitude of non-$CO_2$ GHGs emissions from the Samcheok large-fire differed significantly, showing 93% of CO (44.100Gg), 6.4% of CH4 (3.053Gg), 0.5% of $NO_x$ (0.238Gg), and 0.1% of $N_2O$ (0.038Gg). Although there were little changes in the total burnt area by the burn severity, there were differences in the emission of non-$CO_2$ GHGs with the degree of the burn severity. The maximum emission of non-$CO_2$ GHGs occurred in moderate burn severity, indicating 47% of the total emission.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.36 no.2_1
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• pp.179-197
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• 2020

Topographic normalization reduces the terrain effects on reflectance by adjusting the brightness values of the image pixels to be equal if the pixels cover the same land-cover. Topographic effects are induced by the imaging conditions and tend to be large in high mountainousregions. Therefore, image analysis on mountainous terrain such as estimation of wildfire damage assessment requires appropriate topographic normalization techniques to yield accurate image processing results. However, most of the previous studies focused on the evaluation of topographic normalization on satellite images with moderate-low spatial resolution. Thus, the alleviation of topographic effects on multi-temporal high-resolution images was not dealt enough. In this study, the evaluation of terrain normalization was performed for each band to select the optimal technical combinations for rapid and accurate wildfire damage assessment using PlanetScope images. PlanetScope has considerable potential in the disaster management field as it satisfies the rapid image acquisition by providing the 3 m resolution daily image with global coverage. For comparison of topographic normalization techniques, seven widely used methods were employed on both pre-fire and post-fire images. The analysis on bi-temporal images suggests the optimal combination of techniques which can be applied on images with different land-cover composition. Then, the vegetation index was calculated from the images after the topographic normalization with the proposed method. The wildfire damage detection results were obtained by thresholding the index and showed improvementsin detection accuracy for both object-based and pixel-based image analysis. In addition, the burn severity map was constructed to verify the effects oftopographic correction on a continuous distribution of brightness values.

• Korean Journal of Plant Resources
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• v.35 no.2
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• pp.169-182
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• 2022

This study was conducted to predict the distribution of rare·endemic plants (Sophora koreensis Nakai) in the border forests where wildfire damage occurred and to quantify the damage. For this purpose, we tried to derive more accurate results through forest area damage (NBR) according to the Burn severity of wildfires, damage by tree species type (Vegetation map), and MaxEnt model. For Burn severity analysis, satellite imagery (Landsat-8) was used to analyze Burn severity (ΔNBR2016-2015) and to derive the extent of damage. To prepare the Vegetation map, the land cover map prepared by the Ministry of Environment, the Vegetation map prepared by the Korea Forest Service, and the vegetation survey conducted by itself were conducted to prepare the clinical map before and after the forest fire. Lastly, for MaxEnt model analysis, the AUC value was derived by using the habitat coordinates of Sophora koreensis Nakai based on the related literature and self-report data. As a result of combining the Maxent model analysis data with the Burn severity data, it was confirmed that 45.9% of the 44,760 m² of habitat (predicted) area of Sophora koreensis Nakai in the wildfire damaged area or 20,552 m², was damaged.

• Journal of the Korean Association of Geographic Information Studies
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.133-149
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• 2022

Existing domestic studies on estimating rice yield were mainly implemented at the level of cities and counties in the entire nation using MODIS satellite images with low spatial resolution. Unlike previous studies, this study tried to estimate rice yield at the level of eup-myon-dong in Gimje-si, Jeollabuk-do using Sentinel-2 satellite images with medium spatial resolution, rainfall and soil data, and then to evaluate its accuracy. Five vegetation indices such as NDVI, LAI, EVI2, MCARI1 and MCARI2 derived from Sentinel-2 images of August 1, 2018 for Gimje-si, Jeollabuk-do, rainfall and paddy soil-type data were aggregated by the level of eup-myon-dong and then rice yield was estimated with gamma generalized linear model, an expanded variant of multi-variate regression analysis to solve the non-normality problem of dependent variable. In the rice yield model finally developed, EVI2, rainfall days in September, and saline soils ratio were used as significant independent variables. The coefficient of determination representing the model fit was 0.68 and the RMSE for showing the model accuracy was 62.29kg/10a. This model estimated the total rice production in Gimje-si in 2018 to be 96,914.6M/T, which was very close to 94,470.3M/T the actual amount specified in the Statistical Yearbook with an error of 0.46%. Also, the rice production per unit area of Gimje-si was amounted to 552kg/10a, which was almost consistent with 550kg/10a of the statistical data. This result is similar to that of the previous studies and it demonstrated that the rice yield can be estimated using Sentinel-2 satellite images at the level of cities and counties or smaller districts in Korea.