• Korean Journal of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.109-120
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• 2007

The information on flowpath, storage, residence time, and interactions of water and carbon transport in a catchment is the prerequisite to the understanding and predicting of water and carbon cycling in the mountainous landscapes of Korea. In this paper, along with some up-to-date results, we present the principal methods that are currently used in HydroKorea and CarboKorea research to obtain such information. Various catchment hydrological processes have been examined on the basis of the water table fluctuations, the end-member mixing model, the cross correlation analysis, and cosmogenic radioactive isotope activity. In the Gwangneung catchment, the contribution of surface discharge was relatively large, and the changes in the amount, intensity and patterns of precipitation affected both the flowpath and the mean residence time of water. Particularly during the summer monsoon, changes in precipitation patterns and hydrological processes in the catchment influenced the carbon cycle such that the persistent precipitation increased the discharge of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) concentrated in the surface soil layer. The improved understanding of the hydrological processes presented in this report will enable a more realistic assessment of the effects of climate changes on the water resource management and on the carbon cycling in forest catchments.

• Korean Journal of Ecology and Environment
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• v.36 no.4 s.105
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• pp.434-446
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• 2003

The fate and transport of many trace metals, metalloids, and radionuclides in porous media is closely linked to the biogeochemical reactions that occur as a result of organic carbon being sequentially degraded by different microorganisms using a series of terminal electron acceptors. The spatial distribution of these biogeochemical reactions is affected by processes that are often unique and/or characteristic to a specific environment. Generic model formulations have been developed and applied to simulate the fate and transport of arsenic in two hydrologic settings, permanently flooded freshwater sediments, namely non-vegetated wetland sediments and vegetated wetland sediments. The key physical processes that have been considered are sedimentation, effects of roots on biogeochemistry, advective transport, and differences in mixing processes. Steady-state formulations were applied to the sedimentary environments. Results of numerical simulations show that these physical processes significantly affect the chemical profiles of different electron acceptors, their reduced species, and arsenate as well as arsenite that will result from the degradation of an organic carbon source in the sediments. Even though specific biological transformations are allowed to proceed only in zones where they are thermodynamically favorable, the results show that mixing as well as abiotic reactions can make the profiles of individual electron acceptors overlap and/or appear to reverse their expected order.