• Journal of Space Technology and Applications
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• v.1 no.2
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• pp.178-198
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• 2021

The Solar Space Environment Division of the Korean Society of Space Science (KSSS) has recently conducted a survey among the domestic researchers affiliated with academia, national research institutes, and for-profit institutes of how the data and models in their professional research field are produced, maintained, and utilized. The primary purpose of this survey is to increase the awareness and utilization of the space environment data and models as well as to promote constructive collaborations among the domestic and international researchers. The models and data surveyed are categorized into three sub-fields: the solar and interplanetary space, the (terrestrial) magnetosphere, and the ionosphere and upper atmosphere. The present paper reports the survey results in the "Magnetosphere" category. The survey shows that the domestically produced data in this category are far less than the data produced in other categories. This can be understood in part as follows: Magnetospheric research relies heavily on the in-situ observations but the development and operation of space-hardened satellites require a significant investment. Nevertheless, the recent publications show an increasing trend of research using the data from the ground stations and the recently launched domestic space missions. In the modeling front, there are first-principles physics models covering from the magnetospheric scale to the sub-ion scale and the models geared towards the space weather prediction. The detailed survey results can be accessed from the KSSS website (http://ksss.or.kr/).

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.39 no.3
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• pp.355-361
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• 2023

Temperature of the Earth's surface is a crucial physical variable in understanding weather and atmospheric dynamics and in coping with extreme heat events that have a great impact on living organismsincluding humans. Thermalsensors on satellites have been a useful meansfor acquiring surface temperature information for wide areas on the globe, and thus characterization of its estimation uncertainty is of central importance for the utilization of the data. Among various factors that affect the estimation, the uncertainty caused by the algorithm itself has not been tested for the atmospheric environment of Korean vicinity. Thisstudy derivesthe uncertainty of the single-channel algorithm under the local atmospheric and oceanic conditions by using reanalysis data and buoy temperature data collected around Korea. Atmospheric profiles were retrieved from two types of reanalysis data, the fifth generation of European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts reanalysis of the global climate and weather (ERA5) and Modern-Era Retrospective analysis for Research and Applications-2 (MERRA-2) to investigate the effect of reanalysis data. MODerate resolution atmospheric TRANsmission (MODTRAN) was used as a radiative transfer code for simulating top of atmosphere radiance and the atmospheric correction for the temperature estimation. Water temperatures used for MODTRAN simulations and uncertainty estimation for the single-channel algorithm were obtained from marine weather buoyslocated in seas around the Korean Peninsula. Experiment results showed that the uncertainty of the algorithm varies by the water vapor contents in the atmosphere and is around 0.35K in the driest atmosphere and 0.46K in overall, regardless of the reanalysis data type. The uncertainty increased roughly in a linear manner as total precipitable water increased.

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.56 no.8
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• pp.497-508
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• 2023

Agricultural reservoirs are crucial structures for water resources monitoring especially in Korea where the resources are seasonally unevenly distributed. Optical and Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) satellites, being utilized as tools for monitoring the reservoirs, have unique limitations in that optical sensors are sensitive to weather conditions and SAR sensors are sensitive to noises and multiple scattering over dense vegetations. In this study, we tried to improve water body detection accuracy through optical-SAR data fusion, and quantitatively analyze the complementary effects. We first detected water bodies at Edong, Cheontae reservoir using the Compact Advanced Satellite 500(CAS500), Kompsat-3/3A, and Sentinel-2 derived Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI), and SAR backscattering coefficient from Sentinel-1 by K-means clustering technique. After that, the improvements in accuracies were analyzed by applying K-means clustering to the 2-D grid space consists of NDWI and SAR. Kompsat-3/3A was found to have the best accuracy (0.98 at both reservoirs), followed by Sentinel-2(0.83 at Edong, 0.97 at Cheontae), Sentinel-1(both 0.93), and CAS500(0.69, 0.78). By applying K-means clustering to the 2-D space at Cheontae reservoir, accuracy of CAS500 was improved around 22%(resulting accuracy: 0.95) with improve in precision (85%) and degradation in recall (14%). Precision of Kompsat-3A (Sentinel-2) was improved 3%(5%), and recall was degraded 4%(7%). More precise water resources monitoring is expected to be possible with developments of high-resolution SAR satellites including CAS500-5, developments of image fusion and water body detection techniques.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.39 no.6_1
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• pp.1321-1330
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• 2023

Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) is the most widely used remote sensing data in the agricultural field and is currently provided by most optical satellites. In particular, as high-resolution optical satellite images become available, the selection of optimal optical satellite images according to agricultural applications has become a very important issue. In this study, we aim to define the most optimal optical satellite image when monitoring NDVI in rice fields in Korea and derive the resolution-related requirements necessary for this. For this purpose, we compared and analyzed the spatial distribution and time series patterns of the Dangjin rice paddy in Korea from 2019 to 2022 using NDVI images from MOD13, Landsat-8, Sentinel-2A/B, and PlanetScope satellites, which are widely used around the world. Each data is provided with a spatial resolution of 3 m to 250 m and various periods, and the area of the spectral band used to calculate NDVI also has slight differences. As a result of the analysis, Landsat-8 showed the lowest NDVI value and had very low spatial variation. In comparison, the MOD13 NDVI image showed similar spatial distribution and time series patterns as the PlanetScope data but was affected by the area surrounding the rice field due to low spatial resolution. Sentinel-2A/B showed relatively low NDVI values due to the wide near-infrared band area, and this feature was especially noticeable in the early stages of growth. PlanetScope's NDVI provides detailed spatial variation and stable time series patterns, but considering its high purchase price, it is considered to be more useful in small field areas than in spatially uniform rice paddy. Accordingly, for rice field areas, 250 m MOD13 NDVI or 10 m Sentinel-2A/B are considered to be the most efficient, but high-resolution satellite images can be used to estimate detailed physical quantities of individual crops.

• Journal of Environmental Science International
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• v.10 no.6
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• pp.431-436
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• 2001

Variations in phytoplankton concentrations result from changes of the ocean color caused by phytoplankton pigments. Thus, ocean spectral reflectance for low chlorophyll waters are blue and high chlorophyll waters tend to have green reflectance. In the Korea region, clear waters and the open sea in the Kuroshio regions of the East China Sea have low chlorophyll. As one moves even closer In the northwestern part of the East China Sea, the situation becomes much more optically complicated, with contributions not only from higher concentration of phytoplankton, but also from sediments and dissolved materials from terrestrial and sea bottom sources. The color often approaches yellow-brown in the turbidity waters (Case Ⅱ waters). To verify satellite ocean color retrievals, or to develop new algorithms for complex case Ⅱ regions requires ship-based studies. In this study, we compared the chlorophyll retrievals from NASA's SeaWiFS sensor with chlorophyll values determined with standard fluorometric methods during two cruises on Korean NFRDI ships. For the SeaWiFS data, we used the standard NASA SeaWiFS algorithm to estimate the chlorophyll_a distribution around the Korean waters using Orbview/ SeaWiFS satellite data acquired by our HPRT station at NFRDl. We studied In find out the relationship between the measured chlorophyll_a from the ship and the estimated chlorophyll_a from the SeaWiFs satellite data around the northern part of the East China Sea, in February, and May, 2000. The relationship between the measured chlorophyll_a and the SeaWiFS chlorophyll_a shows following the equations (1) In the northern part of the East China Sea. Chlorophyll_a =0.121Ln(X) + 0.504, R²= 0.73 (1) We also determined total suspended sediment mass (55) and compared it with SeaWiFS spectral band ratio. A suspended solid algorithm was composed of in-.situ data and the ratio (L/sub WN/(490 ㎚)L/sub WN/(555 ㎚) of the SeaWiFS wavelength bands. The relationship between the measured suspended solid and the SeaWiFS band ratio shows following the equation (2) in the northern part of the East China Sea. SS = -0.703 Ln(X) + 2.237, R²= 0.62 (2) In the near future, NFRDI will develop algorithms for quantifying the ocean color properties around the Korean waters, with the data from regular ocean observations using its own research vessels and from three satellites, KOMPSAT/OSMl, Terra/MODIS and Orbview/SeaWiFS.

• Journal of Satellite, Information and Communications
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.13-17
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• 2008

The conventional telemetry system of Korean low-earth orbiting satellites has certain limitations in accommodating various missions. As the payload becomes complex, it requires very complicated operational concepts in terms of telemetry. With the current design, the telemetry formats have to be rebuilt whenever new payloads or operation concepts are involved, and many constraints in operation shall be produced due to the lacks of its flexibility. As the capability and performance of a satellite have been improved, the communication structure of the satellite should be improved to gather more telemetry data. For the efficiency of data handling, it is necessary to change the grid based telemetry system in which the downlink interval and types for telemetry was limited. Comparing the fixed data map such as grid type, the packet based telemetry system can be operated as flexible and various types of packet can be designed such as the dump packet and the event packet. The sequence of the packets can be modified or newly defined to manage the massive satellite state of health data. In this paper, a new strategy for the telemetry development partially derived from PUS (Packet Utilization Standard) of European Space Agency, which provides enhanced features for the accommodation of payloads & operational requirements, is presented.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.37 no.5_3
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• pp.1389-1403
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• 2021

Disaster management using VHR (very high resolution) satellite images supports rapid damage assessment and also offers detailed information of the damages. However, the acquisition of pre-event VHR satellite images is usually limited due to the long revisit time of VHR satellites. The absence of the pre-event data can reduce the accuracy of damage assessment since it is difficult to distinguish the changed region from the unchanged region with only post-event data. To address this limitation, in this study, we conducted the wildfire-induced change detection on national wildfire cases using post-fire VHR satellite images and GIS (Geographic Information System) data. For GIS data, a national land cover map was selected to simulate the pre-fire NIR (near-infrared) images using the spatial information of the pre-fire land cover. Then, the simulated pre-fire NIR images were used to analyze bi-temporal NDVI (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index) correlation for unsupervised change detection. The whole process of change detection was performed on a superpixel basis considering the advantages of superpixels being able to reduce the complexity of the image processing while preserving the details of the VHR images. The proposed method was validated on the 2019 Gangwon wildfire cases and showed a high overall accuracy over 98% and a high F1-score over 0.97 for both study sites.

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.54 no.2
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• pp.81-91
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• 2021

Synthetic Apreture Radar (SAR) is attracting attentions with its possibility of producing high resolution data that can be used for soil moisture estimation. High resolution soil moisture data enables more specific observation of soil moisture than existing soil moisture products from other satellites. It can also be used for studies of wildfire, landslide, and flood. The SAR based soil moisture estimation should be conducted considering vegetation, which affects backscattering signals from the SAR sensor. In this study, a SAR based soil moisture estimation at regions covered with various vegetation types on the middle area of Korea (Cropland, Grassland, Forest) is conducted. The representative backscattering model, Water Cloud Model (WCM) is used for soil moisture estimation over vegetated areas. Radar Vegetation Index (RVI) and in-situ soil moisture data are used as input factors for the model. Total 6 study areas are selected for 3 vegetation types according to land cover classification with 2 sites per each vegetation type. Soil moisture evaluation result shows that the accuracy of each site stands out in the order of grassland, forest, and cropland. Forested area shows correlation coefficient value higher than 0.5 even with the most dense vegetation, while cropland shows correlation coefficient value lower than 0.3. The proper vegetation and soil moisture conditions for SAR based soil moisture estimation are suggested through the results of the study. Future study, which utilizes additional ancillary vegetation data (vegetation height, vegetation type) is thought to be necessary.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.39 no.5_1
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• pp.467-479
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• 2023

Satellite altimeters have continuously observed sea surface height (SSH) in the global ocean for the past 30 years, providing clear evidence of the rise in global mean sea level based on observational data. Accurate altimeter-observed SSH is essential to study the spatial and temporal variability of SSH in regional seas. In this study, we used measurements from the Ieodo Ocean Research Station (IORS) and validate SSHs observed by satellite altimeters (Envisat, Jason-1, Jason-2, SARAL, Jason-3, and Sentinel-3A/B). Bias and root mean square error of SSH for each satellite ranged from 1.58 to 4.69 cm and 6.33 to 9.67 cm, respectively. As the matchup distance between satellite ground tracks and the IORS increased, the error of satellite SSHs significantly amplified. In order to validate the correction of the tide and atmospheric effect of the satellite data, the tide was estimated using harmonic analysis, and inverse barometer effect was calculated using atmospheric pressure data at the IORS. To achieve accurate tidal corrections for satellite SSH data in the seas around the Korean Peninsula, it was confirmed that improving the accuracy of tide data used in satellites is necessary.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Marine Environment & Safety
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• v.29 no.6
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• pp.536-542
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• 2023

Satellites represent cutting-edge technology, of ering significant advantages in spatial and temporal observations. National agencies worldwide harness satellite data to respond to marine accidents and analyze ocean fluctuations effectively. However, challenges arise with high-resolution satellite-based sea surface temperature data (Operational Sea Surface Temperature and Sea Ice Analysis, OSTIA), where gaps or empty areas may occur due to satellite instrumentation, geographical errors, and cloud cover. These issues can take several hours to rectify. This study addressed the issue of missing OSTIA data by employing LaMa, the latest deep learning-based algorithm. We evaluated its performance by comparing it to three existing image processing techniques. The results of this evaluation, using the coefficient of determination (R²) and mean absolute error (MAE) values, demonstrated the superior performance of the LaMa algorithm. It consistently achieved R² values of 0.9 or higher and kept MAE values under 0.5 ℃ or less. This outperformed the traditional methods, including bilinear interpolation, bicubic interpolation, and DeepFill v1 techniques. We plan to evaluate the feasibility of integrating the LaMa technique into an operational satellite data provision system.