• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.43 no.6
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• pp.883-896
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• 2023

As human activities in Korea are spread throughout the mountains, forest fires often affect residential areas, infrastructure, and other facilities. Hence, it is necessary to detect fire-damaged areas quickly to enable support and recovery. Remote sensing is the most efficient tool for this purpose. Fire damage detection experiments were conducted on the east coast of Korea. Because this area comprises a mixture of forest and artificial land cover, data with low resolution are not suitable. We used Sentinel-2 multispectral instrument (MSI) data, which provide adequate temporal and spatial resolution, and the k-nearest neighbor (kNN) algorithm in this study. Six bands of Sentinel-2 MSI and two indices of normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and normalized burn ratio (NBR) were used as features for kNN classification. The kNN classifier was trained using 2,000 randomly selected samples in the fire-damaged and undamaged areas. Outliers were removed and a forest type map was used to improve classification performance. Numerous experiments for various neighbors for kNN and feature combinations have been conducted using bi-temporal and uni-temporal approaches. The bi-temporal classification performed better than the uni-temporal classification. However, the uni-temporal classification was able to detect severely damaged areas.

• Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.1-9
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• 2008

Non-point pollution is caused by many diffusive sources, unlike a point pollution derived from industrial wastewater treatment plants or sewage treatment plants. Runoff of non-point pollutants is originated from rainfall or thawing in short period of time moving over and through the a ground surface. They cause ill effect on the quality of neighboring aquatic environment. To prevent effectively the wash off from non-point pollutant, it should be immediately reduced at the source or be treated after gathering of runoff water. This study has been carried out for the best width of riparian buffer zone. So we implemented the experiment in terms of its depth, width and kind of vegetations and calculated the reduction of pollutants loading. The experimental zone encompasses the watershed of Namhan River (Kyunggido Yangpyunggun Byungsanri). The region was divided into 5 land cover sectors : grass, reed, pussy willow, mixed(grass+pussy willow) and natural zone to compare effectiveness of vegetation. Water samples from four points have been collected in different depths. And the pollutant removal efficiency by sectors with different plant species was yielded through influent with one of each sample. And we obtained the correlation between the width of riparian buffer zone and the removal efficiency of pollutants. Using correlation result, the width of riparian buffer zones which needs to improve the water quality of river could be derived.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Environmental Restoration Technology
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• v.23 no.5
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• pp.1-14
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• 2020

In order to improve the urban thermal environment, efforts are being made to increase green areas in cities that include park construction, planting, and green roofing. Among these efforts, urban parks play an important role not only in improving the urban thermal environment, but also in terms of ecosystem services (serving as resting places for citizens, providing cleaner air quality, reducing noise, etc.). Therefore, the purpose of this study is to suggest planning and management guidelines for urban parks that are effective in improving the thermal environment, by analyzing the urban surface temperature reduction performance of urban parks. To do this, first, land surface temperature was calculated by using Landsat 8 images. Second, the PCI (Park Cool Island) index was calculated to identify the temperature reduction performance of urban parks. Third, the characteristics of parks (area, shape, vegetation) and the surrounding spatial characteristics (land cover, building-related variables, etc.) were identified. Finally, the relationship between the PCI indices (PCI scale, PCI effect, PCI intensity) and the characteristics of the parks and their surroundings were analyzed. The results revealed that the parks consisting of a larger area, simple shape, and higher tree coverage ratio had increased PCI performance, and were advantageous for improving the urban thermal environment. Meanwhile, PCI performance was found to have decreased in areas with a higher impermeable area ratio and building coverage ratio. The outcomes of this study can be used to identify priority areas for planning and management of urban parks and can also be utilized as planning and management guidelines for improving urban thermal environment.

• Journal of Urban Science
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.17-27
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• 2017

Recently, civil complaints have increased due to water pollution and bad smell in rivers. Therefore, attention is focused on improving the river environment. The purpose of this study is to acquire RGB and thermal infrared images using UAV for sewage outlet and to monitor the status of stream pollution and the applicability UAV based images for river embankment maintenance plan was examined. The accuracy of the 3D model was examination by SfM(Structure from Motion) based images analysis on river embankment maintenance area. Especially, The wastewater discharged from the factory near the river was detected as an thermal infrared images and the flow of wastewater was monitored. As a result of the study, we could monitor the cause and flows of wastewater pollution by detecting temperature change caused by wastewater inflow using UAV images. In addition, UAV based a high precision 3D model (DTM, Digital Topographic Map, Orthophoto Mosaic) was produced to obtain precise DSM(Digital Surface Model) and vegetation cover information for river embankment maintenance.

• Journal of Ecology and Environment
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• v.42 no.3
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• pp.128-138
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• 2018

Background: This study investigated the variation of soil organic carbon in four land cover types: natural and mixed forest, cultivated land, Eucalyptus plantation and open bush land. The study was conducted in the Birr watershed of the upper Blue Nile ('Abbay') river basin. Methods: The data was subjected to a two-way of ANOVA analysis using the general linear model (GLM) procedures of SAS. Pairwise comparison method was also used to assess the mean difference of the land uses and depth levels depending on soil properties. Total of 148 soil samples were collected from two depth layers: 0-10 and 10-20 cm. Results: The results showed that overall mean soil organic carbon stock was higher under natural and mixed forest land use compared with other land use types and at all depths ($29.62{\pm}1.95Mg\;C\;ha^{-1}$), which was 36.14, 28.36, and 27.63% more than in cultivated land, open bush land, and Eucalyptus plantation, respectively. This could be due to greater inputs of vegetation and reduced decomposition of organic matter. On the other hand, the lowest soil organic carbon stock under cultivated land could be due to reduced inputs of organic matter and frequent tillage which encouraged oxidation of organic matter. Conclusions: Hence, carbon concentrations and stocks under natural and mixed forest and Eucalyptus plantation were higher than other land use types suggesting that two management strategies for improving soil conditions in the watershed: to maintain and preserve the forest in order to maintain carbon storage in the future and to recover abandoned crop land and degraded lands by establishing tree plantations to avoid overharvesting in natural forests.

• Journal of Environmental Health Sciences
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• v.31 no.3
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• pp.199-206
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• 2005

C. neoformans-associated cryptococcosis is primarily a disease of immunocompromised persons, has a world-wide distribution, and is often spread by pigeons in the urban environment. In contrast, C. gattii causes infection in normal hosts, has only been described in tropical and semi-tropical areas of the world, and has a unique niche in river gum Eucalyptus trees. Cryptococcosis is acquired through inhalation of the yeast propagules from the environment. C. gattii has been identified as the cause of an emerging infectious disease centered on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. No cases of C. gattii-disease were diagnosed prior to 1999; the current incidence rate is 36 cases per million population. A search was initiated in 2001 to find the ecological niche of this basidiomycetous yeast. C. gattii was found in the environment in treed areas of Vancouver Island. The highest percentage of colonized-tree clusters were found around central Vancouver Island, with decreasing rates of colonization to the north and south. Climate, soil and vegetation cover of this area, called the Coastal Douglas fir biogeoclimatic zone, is unique to British Columbia and Canada. The concentration of airborne C. gattii was highest in the dry summer months, and lowest during late fall, winter, and early spring, months which have heavy rainfall. The study of the emerging colonization of this organism and subsequent cases of environmentally acquired disease will be informative in planning public health management of new routes of exposure to exotic agents in areas impacted by changing climate and land use patterns.

• Journal of Korean Society of Forest Science
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• v.81 no.4
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• pp.346-356
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• 1992

The extensive Snake River floodplain in Northwest United States has experienced major changes in water channels and vegetation types due to floodings. To detect the change of wetland cover-types for the period of 1985 and 1988, post-classification comparison and image differencing change detection techniques were evaluated using Landsat-5 TM digital data. Differenced infrared-band images indicated better accuracy indices than any visible-band images. A thresholding technique was applied to identify the change and no change categories from the transformed images produced by image differencing. The problems in using different accuracy indices, including the Kappa coefficient of agreement, overall accuracy, producer's accuracy, user's accuracy, and average accuracy(based on both the producer's and user's accuracy approaches) in determining an optimal threshold level, were examined.

• Proceedings of the Korea Water Resources Association Conference
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• 2006.05a
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• pp.149-153
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• 2006

Precipitation is the most important component and critical to the study of water and energy cycle. This study investigates the propagation of precipitation retrieval uncertainty in the simulation of hydrologic variables for varying spatial resolution on two different vegetation cover. We explore two remotely sensed rain retrievals (space-borne IR-only and radar rainfall) and three spatial grid resolutions. An offline Community Land Model (CLM) was forced with in situ meteorological data In turn, radar rainfall is replaced by the satellite rain estimates at coarser resolution $(0.25^{\circ},\;0.5^{\circ}\;and\;1^{\circ})$ to determine their probable impact on model predictions. Results show how uncertainty of precipitation measurement affects the spatial variability of model output in various modelling scales. The study provides some intuition on the uncertainty of hydrologic prediction via interaction between the land surface and near atmosphere fluxes in the modelling approach.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.31 no.7
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• pp.698-707
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• 2010

The Late Pleistocene pollen record from the Poil-dong, Uiwang, Kyunggi-do, reveals that mixed coniferous and deciduous broadleaved forests were spread along with herb and fern understory. Palynofloral changes reflect climate fluctuations. From ca. 43,100 to 41,900 cal. yr BP, a mixed coniferous and deciduous broadleaved forest combined with open grassland occupied the study area, which indicates cooler condition than today. During the period of ca. 41,900-41,200 cal. yr BP, along with fern understory a decrease in subalpine conifers and an increase in temperate deciduous broadleaved trees suggest a climatic amelioration. A climatic deterioration, as evidenced by an increase in subalpine conifers and a decrease in the density of vegetation cover, occurred from ca. 41,200 to 39,700 cal. yr BP.

• Journal of the Korean Association of Geographic Information Studies
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• v.2 no.3
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• pp.46-59
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• 1999

Remote sensing provides informations on the changes of the hydrological states and variables over with the temporal and spatial distribution to monitor hydrological conditions and changes for large area. Especially, it can extract a spatial distribution of hydrological parameters such as surface albedo, vegetation informations, and surface temperature to effectively manage water resources of the watershed. In this study, we analyzed the characteristic of temporal and spatial changes in surface hydrological parameters which is necessary to identify the spatial distribution of water resources. 5 Landsat TM data of 1995 which is collected for Bochong-chon watershed, located in the upper stream of Keum River, were used to estimate characteristics on the change of hydrological parameters and atmospheric correction was carried out using COST model. The study showed that the difference of the albedo by the land cover was very sensitive depending upon the change of sun elevation and the amount of water in the soil. The difference between the surface temperature analysis and the measured air temperature was from $2.5^{\circ}C$ to $3.86^{\circ}C$.