• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.373-382
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• 2022

Unsaturated soil at high suctions is widespread. Many civil engineering projects are related to the hydro-mechanical behavior of unsaturated soils at high suctions, particularly in arid and semiarid areas. To investigate water retention behaviors of nine clayey soils (one is classified as fat clay and the others are classified as lean clay according to the unified soil classification system), the high suction (3.29-286.7 MPa) was imposed on the specimens at zero net stress by the vapor equilibrium technique. In this paper, the effect of void ratio on the water retention behavior at high suction was discussed in detail. Validation data showed that soil types, i.e., different mineralogical compositions, are critical in the soil water retention behavior at a high suction range. Second, the hysteresis behavior at a high suction range is mainly related to the clay content and the specific surface area. And the mechanism of water retention and hysteresis behavior at high suctions was discussed. Moreover, the maximum suction is not a unique value, and it is crucial to determine the maximum suction value accurately, especially for the shear strength prediction at high suctions. If the soil consists of hydrophilic minerals such as montmorillonite and illite, the maximum suction will be lower than 10⁶ kPa. Finally, using the area of hysteresis to quantify the degree of hysteresis at a high suction range is proposed. There was a good correlation between the area of hydraulic hysteresis and the specific surface area.

• Korean Journal of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.297-306
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• 2019

Soil moisture monitoring is an important task to cope with climate change, and soil water prediction can provide large-scale soil moisture information. Therefore, this study was conducted to evaluate the relationship between the measured and predicted soil water content, and to estimate the correlation between the soil characteristics and soil water content. The selected sites in soil moisture monitoring network were 76, and the soil with high sand content (sand, loamy sand, and sandy loam in soil texture) accounted for 77% of the total. Organic matter and bulk density were 0.03 to 3.50% and 1.01 to 1.69 Mg m^-3, respectively. Predicting values of field capacity and wilting point were lower than the measured soil water content, and the correlation coefficient between the measured and predicted values were low as 0.548 to 0.748. However, a significantly high positive correlation (p<0.01) found between the measured and predicted soil water content. Soil water (field water capacity and wilting point) content was highly positively correlated with silt, clay, and organic matter (p<0.01) and highly negatively correlated with sand (p<0.01).

• KOREAN JOURNAL OF CROP SCIENCE
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• v.52 no.2
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• pp.204-207
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• 2007

This study was conducted to suggest proper water management practices after and before broadcasting of rice seed on flooded paddy surface at reclaimed saline soil with two different saline levels in Gyehwado Substation of Honam Agricultural Research Institute (HARI) NICS, RDA for two years from 2004 to 2005. The stable seedling stand in low saline soil of 0.1% salinity was obtained by one time of water exchange after soil rotary Whereas in medium saline soilof 0.3% salinity, three times of water exchange was required for the stable seedling stand. Milled rice yield was not affected by frequency of water exchange in low saline soil, while it decreased sharply in one and two times of water exchange compared with three times of water exchange in medium saline soil. Irrigation water immediately after direct seeding increased the number of seeding stand in low saline soil. With the increase in the interval of water exchange after direct seeding, the milled rice yield decreased. Although the continuous water flowing showed the most number of seedling stand and was increased milled rice yield compared with the others interval of water exchange in medium saline soil, the number of seedling stand and milled rice wasn't significantly different up to exchange of two days interval compared with the continuous water flowing.

• Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.205-209
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• 1993

A new treatment system for animal waste water has been developed as an alternative to the activated sludge process. It consists of two treatments; one is operated with 7 tanks, and the other is soil and plant cultivation bed. Aerobic microorganisms are added to the influent water in the tanks where the water is aerated so that the microbes utilize the pollutants, while sedimentation removes the indigestible solids. In the secondary treatment the water, which has already received a primary treatment, is filtered through soil where it also receives treatment by soil organisms. In addition there is transpiration of water and absorption of minerals by plants. In the primary treatment BOD, SS, coliforms (E. coli), TP and total bacteria were removed 79-99%, but COD and TN were removed only 58% and 36%, respectively. In the secondary treatment removal of nutrients proceeded further, and 93-99% of pollutants were removed. The treated waters met the quality standard of discharge water in Japan except for TN, which was in too great a concentration to meet discharge standards. This problem requires further study.

• Korean Journal of Soil Science and Fertilizer
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• v.45 no.3
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• pp.353-359
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• 2012

The identification of effective root zone would clarify dynamics of plant available water and soil water balance. Using the relationship between soil properties and electrical resistivity (ER) the purpose of this research is to identify soil zone affected by a plant root activity using electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) technique. Four plastic containers were prepared for two different soil textures (clay and sandy loam) and one container for each texture was selected for planting four corn seedlings (Zea mays L.) and the others were prepared for the blank. For ERT monitoring, we prepared 0.8 m plastic sticks with 17 electrodes installed with 5 cm space. The Ministing (AGI Inc., Texas) instrument for electrical resistivity measurement and semi-auto converter of electrode arrangement were set up for dipole-dipole array. During 2 months of the corns growing, ERT monitoring was made 3 to 4 days after the irrigation practice. Despite of the same amount water supplied into soils, two textures showed very different apparent resistivity values due to different clay content. The apparent electrical resistivity is consistently lower in clay loam comparing to sandy loam soil implying that plant root does not significantly alter the overall trend of resistivity. When plant root system, however, is active both soils with plants showed 2-7 times higher electrical resistivity and higher coefficient variation than soils without plant, implying the effect of root system on the resistivity, in which may caused by. This result suggests plant root activities regulating the soil water dynamics mainly control the variation of electrical resistivity over soil textural difference. Therefore the identification of water uptake zone would highly be correlated to plant root activities, thus ERT will be feasible approach to identify spatial characteristics of a plant root activity.

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.42 no.1
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• pp.9-19
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• 2009

This study presents the effects of temporally varied groundwater table on hydrological components such as surface runoff, evapotranspiration, and soil water content. To this end, the SWAT-MODFLOW model in which the groundwater module of SWAT is replaced with MODFLOW model has been used with a modification to enhance the coupling between the water content in soil profile and the groundwater in shallow aquifer. The variable soil layer construction technique (VSLT) is developed in the present work to represent the direct interaction of soil water and groundwater more realistically, and then the VSLT is incorporated into SWAT-MODFLOW model. In VSLT, when the simulated groundwater table rises within the soil zone, the soil layers below the water table is regarded as a portion of the shallow aquifer, so that those layers are excluded from the initially defined soil zone and are governed by the MODFLOW. From the simulation tests for the Musim river basin, the improved SWAT-MODFLOW model with VSLT is found to correctly evaluate the spatial distributions of overland flow, soil moisture, evapotranspiration according to the groundwater table variation.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.109-120
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• 2004

There has been outstanding research on the soil-water characteristic curves of unsaturated soils over the past several decades. Unfortunately, unsaturated soil mechanics has not been considered as an important factor in Korea. In this paper, laboratory test and numerical analysis(SoilVision Professional ver 3.04) were performed to investigate the prediction method of soil-water characteristic curve and unsaturated permeability coefficient in reclaimed ground. The pressure cell, desiccator, and tensiometor tests were conducted on three types of reclaimed soils(dredged soil, sand, weathered granite soil). Numerical analysis was executed to compare the results with the laboratory test results and also compared with the results of each prediction method. Based on the laboratory test, three different types of soils have shown different soil-water characteristic curves. The hysteresis fir these soils is clearly defined. As a result of numerical analysis, Fredlund & Xing's method and Fredlund & Wilson's model proved to worke out well for reclaimed ground soils in Korea. Also, predicting method based on the soil-water characteristic curves from the particle-size distributions is flirty reliable for estimating unsaturated permeability coefficient.

• Journal of Korea Soil Environment Society
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.119-126
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• 1999

This study was carried out to estimate the effect of forest fire on physical and chemical properties of soil The forest fire was in April 1995 at Kongju of Chungnam. Soil samples were collected at 0~5cm, 5~10cm, and 10~20cm soil depths in September 1998 from the burned and unburned sites. Soil organic matter concentrations at 0~5cm and 5~10cm soil depths were significantly greater in unburned site than in burned site. Soil concentrations were greater in unburned site than in burned site at all soil depths. Cation exchange capacity was significantly higher in unburned site than in burned site at 0~5cm soil depth. There were no differences in available soil P, exchangeable soil K, Ca, and Mg, and pH of soil between burned and unburned sites. Soil water content at 0~5cm soil depth was significantly greater in unburned site than in burned site. Bulk density at 0~5cm soil depth was significantly higher in burned site than in unburned site. Forest fire had an adverse effect on physical and chemical properties of soil in this study, Burning of vegetation and forest 리oor organic matter in burned site may reduce organic matter supply to soil and increase soil erosion. Consequently, forest fire may have adverse influence on long-term site productivity.

• Korean Journal of Soil Science and Fertilizer
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• v.44 no.1
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• pp.38-47
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• 2011

This study focused on health risk assessment via multi-routes of As exposure to establish a target cleanup level (TCL) in abandoned mines. Soil, ground water, and rice samples were collected near ten abandoned mines in November 2009. The As contaminations measured in all samples were used for determining the probabilistic health risk by Monte-Carlo simulation techniques. The human exposure to As compound was attributed to ground water ingestion. Cancer risk probability (R) via ground water and rice intake exceeded the acceptable risk range of $10^{-6}{\sim}10^{-4}$ in all selected mines. In particular, the MB mine showed the higher R value than other mines. The non-carcinogenic effects, estimated by comparing the average As exposure with corresponding reference dose were determined by hazard quotient (HQ) values, which were less than 1.0 via ground water and rice intake in SD, NS, and MB mines. This implied that the non-carcinogenic toxic effects, due to this exposure pathway had a greater possibility to occur than those in other mines. Besides, hazard index (HI) values, representing overall toxic effects by summed the HQ values were also greater than 1.0 in SD, NS, JA, and IA mines. This revealed that non-carcinogenic toxic effects were generally occurred. The As contaminants in all selected mines exceeded the TCL values for target cancer risk ($10^{-6}$) through ground water ingestion and rice intake. However, the As level in soil was greater than TCL value for target cancer risk via inadvertent soil ingestion pathway, except for KK mine. In TCL values for target hazard quotient (THQ), the As contaminants in soil did not exceed such TCL value. On the contrary, the As levels in ground water and polished rice in SD, NS, IA, and MB mines were also beyond the TCL values via ground water and rice intake. This study concluded that the health risks through ground water and rice intake were greater than those though soil inadvertent ingestion and dermal contact. In addition, it suggests that the abandoned mines to exceed the risk-based TCL values are carefully necessary to monitor for soil remediation.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Landscape Architecture
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• v.28 no.5
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• pp.39-47
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• 2000

This study is to investigate the conditions closely related to the establishment of vegetation in the riparian zone: the soil condition, an important factor along with climate and light. Especially, the soil structure of the microtopographical formations in the specific area known as the riparian microtopographical zone investigated. In addition, the effect of the riparian microtopographical features on the ground water level, soil moisture content, and vegetation was studied. The results of this study are as follows; 1) At all sample sites, below the sand layer, a gravel layer is always present. This is the result of past floods. 2) Although Salix koreensis experiences frequent disturbances such as increase in river level and floods, this vegetation establishes itself in the most secure are in the microtopographical zone. 3) The growth of Phragmites japonica is closely related to the underground water level. 4) It is clear that Miscanthus sacchariflorus grows concentrated in dry areas. 5) The soil accumulation conditions differ according to the soil moisture content of each microtopgraphical feature. Accordingly, the moisture content of the soil is clearly different within the microtopographical zone. The continuous and long-term investigation and research on the relation of riparian reproduction and the relevance with location surrounding factors are necessary in the future.