• Journal of The Korean Society of Agricultural Engineers
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• v.62 no.2
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• pp.63-73
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• 2020

Drought is considered as a devastating hazard that causes serious agricultural, ecological and socio-economic impacts worldwide. Fundamentally, the drought can be defined as temporarily different levels of inadequate precipitation, soil moisture, and water supply relative to the long-term average conditions. From no unified definition of droughts, droughts have been divided into different severity level, i.e., moderate drought, severe drought, extreme drought and exceptional drought. The drought severity classification defined the ranges for each indicator for each dryness level. Because the ranges of the various indicators often don't coincide, the final drought category tends to be based on what the majority of the indicators show and on local observations. Evaporative Stress Index (ESI), a satellite-based drought index using the ratio of potential and actual evaporation, is being used as a index of the droughts occurring rapidly in a short period of time from studies showing a more sensitive and fast response to drought compared to Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI), and Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI). However, ESI is difficult to provide an objective drought assessment because it does not have clear drought severity classification criteria. In this study, U.S. Drought Monitor (USDM), the standard for drought determination used in the United States, was applied to ESI, and the Percentile method was used to classify drought categories by severity. Regarding the actual 2017 drought event in South Korea, we compare the spatial distribution of drought area and understand the USDM-based ESI by comparing the results of Standardized Groundwater level Index (SGI) and drought impact information. These results demonstrated that the USDM-based ESI could be an effective tool to provide objective drought conditions to inform management decisions for drought policy.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.35 no.6_3
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• pp.1285-1298
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• 2019

Drought is one of the factors that can cause wildfires. Drought is related to not only the occurrence of wildfires but also their frequency, extent and severity. In South Korea, most wildfires occur in dry seasons (i.e. spring and autumn), which are highly correlated to drought events. In this study, we examined the relationship between wildfire occurrence and drought factors, and developed satellite-based new drought indices for assessing wildfire risk over South Korea. Drought factors used in this study were high-resolution downscaled soil moisture, Normalized Different Water Index (NDWI), Normalized Multi-band Drought Index (NMDI), Normalized Different Drought Index (NDDI), Temperature Condition Index (TCI), Precipitation Condition Index (PCI) and Vegetation Condition Index (VCI). Drought indices were then proposed through weighted linear combination and one-class support vector machine (One-class SVM) using the drought factors. We found that most drought factors, in particular, soil moisture, NDWI, and PCI were linked well to wildfire occurrence. The validation results using wildfire cases in 2018 showed that all five linear combinations produced consistently good performance (> 88% in occurrence match). In particular, the combination of soil moisture and NDWI, and the combination of soil moisture, NDWI, and precipitation were found to be appropriate for representing wildfire risk.

• Proceedings of the KSRS Conference
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• 2008.10a
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• pp.80-83
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• 2008

Diverse researches using vegetation index have been carried out to monitor spring droughts that have frequently occurred since 2000. The strength of the drought monitoring using vegetation index lies in that it can reflect characteristics of satellite images: large area coverage, cyclicity, and promptness. However, vegetation index involve uncertainly caused by diverse factors that affect vegetation stress. In this study, multi-temporal vegetation index is compared with the most representative meteorological drought indices like PSDI, SPI. Based on the results from analyses, usability of vegetation index as a tool of drought analysis is proposed.

• Journal of The Korean Society of Agricultural Engineers
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• v.61 no.2
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• pp.1-11
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• 2019

Remote sensing products have long been used to monitor and forecast natural disasters. Satellite-derived rainfall products are becoming more accurate as space and time resolution improve, and are widely used in areas where measurement is difficult because of the periodic accumulation of images in large areas. In the case of North Korea, there is a limit to the estimation of precipitation for unmeasured areas due to the limited accessibility and quality of statistical data. CHIRPS (Climate Hazards Group InfraRed Precipitation with Stations) is global satellite-derived rainfall data of 0.05 degree grid resolution. It has been available since 1981 from USAID (U.S. Agency for International Development), NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration), NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration). This study evaluates the applicability of CHIRPS rainfall products for South Korea and North Korea by comparing CHIRPS data with ground observation data, and analyzing temporal and spatial drought trends using the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI), a meteorological drought index available through CHIRPS. The results indicate that the data set performed well in assessing drought years (1994, 2000, 2015 and 2017). Overall, this study concludes that CHIRPS is a valuable tool for using data to estimate precipitation and drought monitoring in Korea.

• Journal of The Korean Society of Agricultural Engineers
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• v.62 no.1
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• pp.83-93
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• 2020

East Asia, which includes China, Japan, Korea, and Mongolia, is highly impacted by hydroclimate extremes such drought, flood, and typhoon recent year. In 2017, more than 18.5 million hectares of crops have been damaged in China, and Korea has suffered economic losses as a result of severe drought. Satellite-derived rainfall products are becoming more accurate as space and time resolution become increasingly higher, and provide an alternative means of estimating ground-based rainfall. In this study, we verified the availability of rainfall products by comparing widely used satellite images such as Climate Hazards Groups InfraRed Precipitation with Station (CHIRPS), Global Precipitation Climatology Centre (GPCC), and Precipitation Estimation From Remotely Sensed Information Using Artificial Neural Networks-Climate Data Record (PERSIANN-CDR) with ground stations in East Asia. Also, the satellite-based rainfall products were used to calculate the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI). The temporal resolution is based on monthly images and compared with the past 30 years data from 1989 to 2018. The comparison between rainfall data based on each satellite image products and the data from weather station-based weather data was shown by the coefficient of determination and showed more than 0.9. Each satellite-based rainfall data was used for each grid and applied to East Asia and South Korea. As a result of SPI analysis, the RMSE values of CHIRPS were 0.57, 0.53 and 0.47, and the MAE values of 0.46, 0.43 and 0.37 were better than other satellite products. This satellite-derived rainfall estimates offers important advantages in terms of spatial coverage, timeliness and cost efficiency compared to analysis for drought assessment with ground stations.

• Journal of The Korean Society of Agricultural Engineers
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• v.49 no.6
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• pp.21-33
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• 2007

Different vegetation indices from satellite images have been used for monitoring drought damages, and this study aimed to develop a drought index using NOAA/AVHRR NDVI(Normalized Difference Vegetation Index) and to analyze the temporal and spatial distribution of spring drought severity in North Korea from 1998 to 2001. A new drought index, DevNDVI(Deviation of NDVI), was defined as the difference between a monthly NDVI and average monthly NDVI at the same cover area, and the DevNDVI images at all years except for 2001 demonstrated the drought-damaged areas referred from various domestic and foreign publications. The vegetation of 2001 showed high vitality despite the least amount of rainfall among the target years, and the reason was investigated that higher temperature above normal average would shift the growing stages of plants ahead. Therefore, complementary methods like plant growth models or ground survey data should be adopted in order to evaluate drought-induced plant stress using satellite-based NDVI and to make up far the distortion induced by other environments than lack of precipitation.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.27 no.7
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• pp.787-803
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• 2006

The drought index has been developed, based on a $8.6{\mu}m$ surface emissivity in the $8-12{\mu}m$ MODIS channels over the African Sahel region (10-20 N, 13 W-35 W) and the Seoul Metropolitan Area (SMA: 37.2-37.7 N, 126.6-127.2 E). The emissivity indicates the $SiO_2$ strength and can vary interannually by vegetation, water vapor, and soil moisture, as a potential indicator of drought conditions. In a well-vegetated region close to 10 N of the Sahel, the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) showed high sensitivity, while the emissivity did not. On the other hand, the NDVI experienced negligible variability in a poorly vegetated region near 20 N, while the emissivity reflected sensitively the effects of atmospheric water vapor and soil moisture conditions. Seasonal variations of the emissivity (0.94-0.97) have been examined over the SMA during the 2003-2004 period compared to NDVI (or Enhanced Vegetation Index; EVI). Here, the dryness was more severe in urban area with less vegetation than in suburban area; the two areas corresponded to the north and south of the Han river, respectively. The emissivity exhibiting a significant spatial correlation of ${\sim}0.8$ with the two indices can supplement their information.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.35 no.6
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• pp.1209-1218
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• 2015

As the drought disasters are increased in the world, the need of study using satellite image data is on the rise. This study is conducted to analyze the drought in the region using satellite image, and to analyze the correlation with the standard precipitation index (SPI) and the actual drought cases. We selected Dongducheon and Taebaek region for domestic major drought (2001, 2008-2009). The correlation with the SPI and the observed water level data was analyzed using the $0.05^{\circ}$ spatial resolution and 8days MODIS DSI (Drought Severity Index). In Dongducheon, 6-months DSI has a correlation of 0.71 with the SPI (30). In Taebaek, the correlation between 6-months DSI and SPI (90) was a 0.40 and showed an average hit ratio of 65.7% in comparing with the observed water level of study area. In summary, this study showed a limited correlation between DSI based on satellite images and meteorological drought index SPI and confirmed the possibility of using DSI for the domestic study.

• Journal of The Korean Society of Agricultural Engineers
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• v.60 no.4
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• pp.73-82
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• 2018

In this study, we assessed meteorological and agricultural drought based on the SPI(Standardized Precipitation Index), SMP(Soil Moisture Percentile), and SMDI(Soil Moisture Deficit Index) indices using satellite-based TRMM(Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission)/GPM(Global Precipitation Measurement) images at the province of Chungcheongbuk-do. The long-term(2000-2015) TRMM/GPM precipitation data were used to estimate the SPI values. Then, we estimated the spatially-/temporally-distributed soil moisture values based on the near-surface soil moisture data assimilation scheme using the TRMM/GPM and MODIS(MODerate resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) images. Overall, the SPI value was significantly affected by the precipitation at the study region, while both the precipitation and land surface condition have influences on the SMP and SMDI values. But the SMP index showed the relatively extreme wet/dry conditions compared to SPI and SMDI, because SMP only calculates the percentage of current wetness condition without considering the impacts of past wetness condition. Considering that different drought indices have their own advantages and disadvantages, the SMDI index could be useful for evaluating agricultural drought and establishing efficient water management plans.

• Journal of The Korean Society of Agricultural Engineers
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• v.64 no.4
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• pp.31-43
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• 2022

In this study, we estimated the monthly FDSI (Flash Drought Stress Index) for assessing flash drought on South Korea using AMSR2(Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer 2) satellite-based soil moisture footprints. We collected the AMSR2 soil moisture and climate-land surface data from April to November 2018 for analyzing the monthly FDSI values. We confirmed that the FDSI values were high at the regions with the high temperature/evapotranspiration while the precipitation is relatively low. Especially, the regions which satisfied an onset of flash drought (FDSI≧0.71) were increased from June. Then, the most of regions suffered by flash drought during the periods (July to August) with the high temperature and evapotranspiration. Additionally, the impacts of landuse and slope degree were evaluated on the monthly FDSI changes. The forest regions that have the steep slope degree showed the relatively higher FDSI values than the others. Thus, our results indicated that the the slope degree has the relatively higher impact on the onset and increasing of flash drought compared to the others.