• Journal of Agricultural Extension & Community Development
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.291-301
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• 2004

As Russian government signs the Kyoto Protocol on November 2004, it will go into effect on Feb. 16 2004. Under the Protocol, 38 industrialized countries are to reduce their combined emissions of six major greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide and methane, to below 1990 levels during the 2008-2012 period. Korea ratified the Protocol in 2002 and is currently exempt from the reduction measures. It is expected, however, that Korea will be pressured to join the reduction scheme from 2013. Although the Kyoto Protocol is national-level agreement each country's urban governments are expected and have to play important role to make it successful one. It is more so for such mesa cities as Seoul which has experienced rapidly worsening environment recent years. Statistics shows that the annual average temperature in Seoul has increased by $1.5^{\circ}C$ for the last century, which is much higher than the national average. 'Heat Island' effect is not unusual any more in Seoul. This study reviews the key points of the Kyoto Protocol, urban warming phenomena in Seoul and its policy responses. In doing so, this study evaluates Tokyo case as a comparative one. It is found that Seoul needs to develop more concrete and feasible policy measures to get current efforts more effective.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.33 no.4
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• pp.1619-1629
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• 2013

It turned out that there was a direct or an indirect relationship among global warming, urban heat island effects, urban and traffic environments, and public's health. In particular, unusual climate phenomena such as frequent heavy rainfall and scorching heat in a row that had rarely happened before have a negative effect on quality of life for people living in urban areas. This study focuses on the effects of roadway geometric design and traffic conditions on air temperature of roadside in Seoul Metropolitan Areas, controlling of roadway micro-climate environment. Five roadway segments containing different roadway and traffic conditions in terms of traffic median with trees, street trees, traffic volume and average travel speeds were surveyed. According to statistical results(t-test) from three roadway air temperature regression model estimations, air temperature is found to be different from one another in three periods-morning, afternoon and evening. Regarding roadway geometric design, air temperature of urban roads with vegetated median strips is lower about 1.3~2.2 degrees in celcius. Higher traffic volumes per lane and lower average travel speeds will tend to increase roadside air temperature, and efficient traffic operation policies can protect from increasing roadside air temperature in urban areas.

• Journal of the Korean Association of Geographic Information Studies
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.100-119
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• 2020

During recent years, the heat environment and particulate matter (PM₁₀) have become serious environmental problems, as increases in heat waves due to rising global temperature interact with weakening atmospheric wind speeds. There exist urban heat islands and urban pollution islands with higher temperatures and air pollution concentrations than other areas. However, few studies have examined these issues together because of a lack of micro-scale data, which can be constructed from spatial data. Today, with the help of satellite images and big data collected by private telecommunication companies, detailed spatial distribution analyses are possible. Therefore, this study aimed to examine the spatial distribution patterns of urban heat islands and urban pollution islands within Busan Metropolitan City and to compare the distributions of the two phenomena. In this study, the land surface temperature of Landsat 8 satellite images, air temperature and particulate matter concentration data derived from a private automated meteorological observation system were gridded in 30m × 30m units, and spatial analysis was performed. Analysis showed that simultaneous zones of urban heat islands and urban pollution islands included some vulnerable residential areas and industrial areas. The political migration areas such as Seo-dong and Bansong-dong, representative vulnerable residential areas in Busan, were included in the co-occurring areas. The areas have a high density of buildings and poor ventilation, most of whose residents are vulnerable to heat waves and air pollution; thus, these areas must be considered first when establishing related policies. In the industrial areas included in the co-occurring areas, concrete or asphalt concrete-based impervious surfaces accounted for an absolute majority, and not only was the proportion of vegetation insufficient, there was also considerable vehicular traffic. A hot-spot analysis examining the reliability of the analysis confirmed that more than 99.96% of the regions corresponded to hot-spot areas at a 99% confidence level.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Landscape Architecture
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• v.50 no.6
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• pp.1-14
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• 2022

To alleviate the urban heat island phenomenon, this study aims to quantitatively analyze the effects of neighborhood green spaces on the improvement of the thermal environment based on detailed scenarios of five types of green spaces, including parks, pocket parks, parking lot greening, roadside planting, and rooftop-wall greening. The ENVI-met 4.4.6v model, a microclimate simulation program, was used to analyze the effects of green spaces. As a result, it was found that the air temperature decreased as the planting density of the park increased, but the thermal comfort index PET, which is the degree of heat sensation felt by humans, was not directly proportional to temperature. The establishment of a pocket park reduced air temperature up to a radius of 56m, while the range of temperature reduction increased by about 12.5% when three additional pocket parks were established at 250m intervals. Unlike the air temperature, PET was only affected in the vicinity of the planted area, so there was no significant difference in the thermal comfort of the surrounding environment due to the construction of pocket parks. Changing the surface pavement from asphalt to lawn blocks and implementing rooftop or wall greening did not directly act as solar shading but positively affected air temperature reduction; PET showed no significant difference. Roadside planting showed a higher air temperature reduction effect as the planting interval was narrower, but PET was not directly proportional to tree density. In the case of shrub planting under trees, it did not significantly affect the air temperature reduction but positively affected the improvement of thermal comfort. This study can outline strategies for constructing neighborhood green spaces to solve the urban heat island phenomena and establish detailed strategies for efficient thermal environment improvements.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Environmental Restoration Technology
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.137-147
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• 2012

GRS is an effective urban ecology restoration technique that can manage a variety of environmental functions such as ecological restoration, rainwater spill control and island heat effect from a low-impact development standpoint that can be utilized in new construction and retrofits. Recently, quantitative evaluation studies, both domestic and abroad, in the areas related to these functions, including near-earth surface climate phenomenon, heavy rainwater regulation, thermal environment of buildings, have been actively underway, and there is a trend to standardize in the form of technological standards. In particular, centered on the advanced European countries, studies of standardizing the specific insulation capability of buildings with green system that comprehensively includes the green roof, from the perspective of replacing the exterior materials of existing buildings, are in progress. The limitation of related studies in the difficulties associated with deriving results that reflect material characteristics of continuously evolving systems due in part to not having sufficiently considered the main components of green system, mechanisms of vegetation, soils. This study attempts to derive, through EnergyPlus, the effects that the vegetation-related indicators such as vegetation height, FCV, etc. have on building energy load, by interpreting vegetation and soil mechanisms through plant canopy model and using an ecological standard indicator LAI that represent the condition of plant growth. Through this, the interpretations that assume green roof system as simple heat insulation will be complemented and a more practical building energy performance evaluation method that reflects numerical methods for heat fluxes phenomena that occur between ecology restoration systems comprised of plants and soil and the ambient space.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.38 no.6_2
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• pp.1633-1641
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• 2022

Urban population concentration and indiscriminate development are causing various environmental problems such as air pollution and heat island phenomena, and causing human resources to deteriorate the damage caused by natural disasters. Urban trees have been proposed as a solution to these urban problems, and actually play an important role, such as providing environmental improvement functions. Accordingly, quantitative measurement and analysis of individual trees in urban trees are required to understand the effect of trees on the urban environment. However, the complexity and diversity of urban trees have a problem of lowering the accuracy of single tree detection. Therefore, we conducted a study to effectively detect trees in Dongjak-gu using high-resolution aerial images that enable effective detection of tree objects and You Only Look Once Version 5 (YOLOv5), which showed excellent performance in object detection. Labeling guidelines for the construction of tree AI learning datasets were generated, and box annotation was performed on Dongjak-gu trees based on this. We tested various scale YOLOv5 models from the constructed dataset and adopted the optimal model to perform more efficient urban tree detection, resulting in significant results of mean Average Precision (mAP) 0.663.

• Atmosphere
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• v.32 no.2
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• pp.119-133
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• 2022

From 2015 to 2021, high-concentration fine dust episodes with a daily average PM_2.5 concentration of 50 ㎍ m^-3 or higher were selected and classified into 3 types [long range transport (LRT), mixed (MIX) and Local emission and stagnant (LES)] using synoptic chart and backward trajectory analysis. And relationships between the fine particle data (PM_2.5 and PM₁₀ concentration and PM_2.5/PM₁₀ ratio) and meteorological data (PBLH, Ta, WS, U-wind, and Rainfall) were analyzed using hourly observation for the classification episodes on the Korean Peninsula and the Seoul metropolitan area (SMA). In LRT, relatively large particles such as dust are usually included, and in LES, fine particle is abundant. In the Korean peninsula, the rainfall was relatively increased centered on the middle and western coasts in MIX and LES. In the SMA, wind speed was rather strong in LRT and weak in LES. In LRT, rainfall was centered in Seoul, and in MIX and LES, rainfall appeared around Seoul. However, when the dust cases were excluded, the difference between the LRT and other types of air quality was decreased, but the meteorological variables (Ta, RH, Pa, PBLH, etc.) were further strengthened. In the case of the Korean Peninsula, it is difficult to find a clear relationship because regional influences (topographical elevation, cities and coasts, etc.) are complexly included in a rather wide area. In the SMA, it is analyzed that the effects of urbanization such as the urban heat island centered on Seoul coincide with the sea and land winds, resulting in a combination of high concentrations and meteorological phenomena.

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.40 no.7
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• pp.571-583
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• 2007

The effects of climatic changes owing to urbanization, geographical and topographical conditions on Penman-Monteith reference evapotranspiration, and energy and aerodynamic terms of Penman-Monteith reference evapotranspiration have been studied. In this study, 56 climatological stations including the Seoul metropolis in South Korea have been selected, and the area of study site was set at $314\;km^2$. The climatological station is centrally located In the study area with a 10 km radius. The geographical and topographical characteristics of these sites were examined using GIS analysis. Land use status of the study area was also examined to estimate the extent of urbanization. The study results indicated that the variation of reference evapotranspiration rate is closely related to urbanization in most climatological stations. The level of change in reference evapotranspiration was higher in areas with higher urbanization rates. The change in reference evapotranspiration appears to be caused by temperature rises following heat island phenomena due to urbanization, and by the decrease in humidity, wind speed and sunshine duration due to the Increase in residential areas in urban districts. Especially, the humidity decrease causes a significant decrease in evapotranspiration rate. The study results showed that climatic change due to urbanization and proximity to the coast had the greatest effect on reference evapotranspiration.