• Title/Summary/Keyword: polar regions

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Atmospheric Chemistry of Mercury in the Polar Regions and its Environmental Implications (극지환경 수은의 대기화학과 환경학적 의미)

  • Schroeder, WH;Kim, Min-Young;Hong, Sung-Min;Shon, Zang-Ho;Kim, Ki-Hyun
    • Journal of the Korean earth science society
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    • v.24 no.5
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    • pp.420-427
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    • 2003
  • The results of recent studies indicate that atmospheric distribution of Hg in the arctic environment is unique enough to show strong depletion during spring followed by notable increases during summer. The observations of this abnormal trend contrast quite sharply with what had been recognized as Hg geochemical behavior in air over the past decades. Using the long-term measurement data of Hg obtained from both the Arctic and Korea, we attempted to provide valuable insights into the unique mercury depletion phenomenon (MDP) in the polar regions of the globe.

Reviews on Natural Resources in the Arctic: Petroleum, Gas, Gas Hydrates and Minerals

  • Yoon, Jong-Ryeol;Kim, Yea-Dong
    • Ocean and Polar Research
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    • v.23 no.1
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    • pp.51-62
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    • 2001
  • The Arctic consists of numerous sedimentary basins containing voluminous natural resources and two of the world's major oil and gas producing areas. The western Siberia Basin in the Arctic region has the largest petroliferous province with an area of 800 ${\times}$ 1,200 km and produces more than 60% of total Russian oil production. The North Slope of Alaska produces about 20% of the U.S. output, i.e., 11% of the total U.S. consumption. Being small compared to those regions, the Canadian Northwest Territories and the Pechora Basin in Russia produce only fair amount of oil and natural gas. There are also many promising areas in the northern continental shelf of Russia. In addition to Russia, Svalbard and Greenland have been investigated for oil and gas. Gas hydrates are widespread in both permafrost regions and arctic continental shelf areas. The reserves of gas hydrates in the Arctic Ocean are about 20${\sim}$32% of total estimated amounts of gas hydrates in the world ocean. Mineral mining is well developed, especially in Russia. The major centers are located around the Kuznetsk Basin and Noril'sk. They are major suppliers of gold, tin, nickel, copper, platinum, cobalt, iron ore, coal as well as apatite. There are also some minings of lead-zinc in Alaska and Arctic Canada.

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Alpine Microorganisms: Useful Tools for Low-Temperature Bioremediation

  • Margesin, Rosa
    • Journal of Microbiology
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    • v.45 no.4
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    • pp.281-285
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    • 2007
  • Cold environments, including polar and alpine regions, are colonized by a wide diversity of micro-organisms able to thrive at low temperatures. There is evidence of a wide range of metabolic activities in alpine cold ecosystems. Like polar microorganisms, alpine microorganisms playa key ecological role in their natural habitats for nutrient cycling, litter degradation, and many other processes. A number of studies have demonstrated the capacity of alpine microorganisms to degrade efficiently a wide range of hydrocarbons, including phenol, phenol-related compounds and petroleum hydrocarbons, and the feasibility of low-temperature bioremediation of European alpine soils by stimulating the degradation capacity of indigenous microorganisms has also been shown.

Lagrangian Observations of Currents in the Coastal Regions off East Coast of Korea (라그랑쥐 측류에 의한 동해 연안역 유동특성 관측)

  • 이문진;강용균;강신영;유홍선
    • Journal of the Korean Society of Marine Environment & Safety
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    • v.1 no.2
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    • pp.53-60
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    • 1995
  • We measured lagrangian currents in the coastal regions off east coast of Korea. The experiment sites are the Ulijin region where Polar Front of the East Sea is formed and the Ulgi region where coastal upwelling occurs frequently in summer. Each drifters are equipped with GPS receiver, and their trajectories are montiored by receiving the data transmitted from drifters through radio signal. The experiment with 'transmitting' GPS is very useful in monitering flows in coastal regions. Trajectories of drifters in the Uljin Polar Front region in October 1994 showed counterclockwise flow pattern. The flow pattern agrees with the SST distributions obtained from NOAA-11 AVHRR image for the same period. The lagrangian trajectories of drifters at 5m and 15m depths in the Ulgi region for normal period of April 1995 showed that the currents at the top 15m layer are almost uniform and their magnitude is 29cm/s. However, the currents, measured by KORDI, during the upwelling period of June 1994 showed that the currents at 5m depth were 1.2 times stronger than those at 15m depth. The current pattern in the Ulgi upwelling region agrees with the horizontal and vertical distributions of seawater temperature measured by NFRDA at the same period.

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Enactment Trend and Implication of the Polar Code in IMO (IMO 극지방운항선박 안전코드 제정 현황 및 시사점)

  • Seo, Dae-Won;Kim, Dae-Heon;Ha, Tae-Bum
    • Journal of Navigation and Port Research
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    • v.38 no.1
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    • pp.59-64
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    • 2014
  • As global warming continues, the rate of ice melting in polar regions is increasing rapidly. The interest related to north polar route is increasing among not only countries near Arctic ocean but also the other countries, In the past, the classification society rule related to a design and operation of ship operating in polar area has been primarily amended by Russia, Norway and Finland located near Artic area. However recently International Maritime Organization decided to legislate the Polar Code to ensure safety of a ship operating in Arctic and Antarctic Ocean, and it is scheduled to be completed until 2014. The present paper focuses on the survey of the current enactment trends of Polar Code and suggests the confrontational strategy in related organization.

Observations of the Polar Ionosphere by the Vertical Incidence Pulsed Ionospheric Radar at Jang Bogo Station, Antarctica

  • Ham, Young-Bae;Jee, Geonhwa;Lee, Changsup;Kwon, Hyuk-Jin;Kim, Jeong-Han;Zabotin, Nikolay;Bullett, Terence
    • Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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    • v.37 no.2
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    • pp.143-156
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    • 2020
  • Korea Polar Research Institute (KOPRI) installed an ionospheric sounding radar system called Vertical Incidence Pulsed Ionospheric Radar (VIPIR) at Jang Bogo Station (JBS) in 2015 in order to routinely monitor the state of the ionosphere in the auroral oval and polar cap regions. Since 2017, after two-year test operation, it has been continuously operated to produce various ionospheric parameters. In this article, we will introduce the characteristics of the JBS-VIPIR observations and possible applications of the data for the study on the polar ionosphere. The JBS-VIPIR utilizes a log periodic transmit antenna that transmits 0.5-25 MHz radio waves, and a receiving array of 8 dipole antennas. It is operated in the Dynasonde B-mode pulse scheme and utilizes the 3-D inversion program, called NeXtYZ, for the data acquisition and processing, instead of the conventional 1-D inversion procedure as used in the most of digisonde observations. The JBS-VIPIR outputs include the height profiles of the electron density, ionospheric tilts, and ion drifts with a 2-minute temporal resolution in the bottomside ionosphere. With these observations, possible research applications will be briefly described in combination with other observations for the aurora, the neutral atmosphere and the magnetosphere simultaneously conducted at JBS.

Polar Remote Sensing in Korea (한국의 극지 원격탐사)

  • Kim, Hyun-Cheol;Hong, Sang-Hoon;Park, Sang-Eun;Lee, Hoonyol
    • Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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    • v.34 no.6_2
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    • pp.1155-1163
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    • 2018
  • Recently, much attention has been focused on the change and role of the Arctic region due to climate change. Studies using various platforms are being conducted in the polar regions. Among them, monitoring of Arctic cryosphere information using remote sensing is the most important observational role of various scientific activities. This special issue introduces several studies on polar exploration monitoring in polar research. We hope that this special issue contributes to the sharing of information on the role of polar exploration in remote areas, as well as the identification of the current status of domestic polar exploration and remote environmental exploration. We are also looking forward to the efforts of Korean remote sensing experts to find out the persistent polar exploration field and to increase national support.

An Experimental Study on the Detection Characteristic of Draft Ice by Thermography System (열화상 시스템에 의한 유빙의 탐지특성에 관한 실험적 연구)

  • Cho, Yong-Jin
    • Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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    • v.18 no.5
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    • pp.302-307
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    • 2017
  • Draft ice in polar regions is formed due to sea level changes and various environmental factors cause damage due to collision with offshore plants and ships for resource development. Drift ice in polar regions is a potential source of accidents for offshore plants that perform long-term operations in one place, as well as on the ship. To prevent accidents with drift ice, offshore plants and ships in polar regions use satellite image information and detection radar to detect drift ice. However, the inability to use visible satellite images at night significantly lowers the detection probability by radar for small drift ice. In this study, we used a thermal imaging system which can be operated day and night for the detection of drift ice, and carried out an experimental study on the detection characteristics of drift ice. To examine the night operation of the thermal imaging system, the experimental condition was set and the thermal image was measured according to the measurement angle change. Under this condition, the correlation was analyzed by theoretical calculating the radiant energy of the drift ice and the sea water.

The Distributions of Nutrients, Chlorophyll-a, and Primary Productivity in the South Pacific Ocean (남태평양의 영양염, 엽록소, 일차생산성 분포)

  • Kim, Dong-Yup;Shim, Jung-Hee;Song, Hwan-Seok;Kang, Young-Chul;Kim, Dong-Seon
    • The Sea:JOURNAL OF THE KOREAN SOCIETY OF OCEANOGRAPHY
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    • v.6 no.1
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    • pp.40-48
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    • 2001
  • The vertical distributions of temperature, salinity, dissolved oxygen, nutrients, chlorophyll, and primary production were investigated within the top 200m water depth in the south Pacific Ocean in February,2000. The study area ($24^{\circ}-41^{\circ}S,\;81^{\circ}-168^{\circ}W$) can be hydrologically divided into two regions. Upwelling was actively occurring in the eastern region of the $110^{\circ}S$ line, meanwhile it was not active in the western region. Accordingly, chemical properties in the surface waters were different between the two regions; nitrate+nitrite and phosphate concentrations were much higher in the eastern region than in the western region due to the active upwelling, but silicate concentration was higher in the western region. Among the nutrients, the major element influencing primary production was also different between the two regions; silicon would be a major element influencing primary production in the eastern region, but nitrogen may act as a major element for primary production in the western region. Primary production showed similar values in the two regions in spite of the large differences of nutrient concentrations in the surface waters, but the total chlorophyll integrated within the 200 m water depth was almost twice as much as in the western region than that in the eastern legion.

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Application of Sedimentary Neodymium Isotopes to the Reconstruction of the Arctic Paleoceanography (퇴적물의 네오디뮴 동위원소 비를 활용한 북극 고환경 복원)

  • Kwangchul Jang;Seung-Il Nam
    • Ocean and Polar Research
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    • v.45 no.2
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    • pp.89-102
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    • 2023
  • Climate and environmental changes in the Arctic Ocean due to global warming have been linked to extreme climate change in mid-latitude regions, including the Korean Peninsula, requiring a better understanding of the Arctic climate system based on the paleo-analog. This review introduces three paleoenvironmental research cases using neodymium isotopes (143Nd/144Nd, εNd) measured on two different fractions of marine sediments: silicate-bound 'detrital' and Fe-Mn oxide-dominated 'authigenic' fractions. In the first case, detrital εNd in core HH17-1085-GC on the continental shelf off northern Svalbard was used for tracing changes in sediment provenance and associated glacier behavior over the last 16.3 ka. The second case showed the potential use of authigenic εNd as a quasi-conservative water mass tracer. Three prominent εNd peaks and troughs observed in core PS72/410-1 from the Mendeleev Ridge in the western Arctic Ocean over the past 76 ka suggested episodic meltwater discharge events during 51~46, 39~35 and 21~13 ka BP. The last case proposed the use of the difference between authigenic and detrital εNd as a proxy for reconstructing glacier fluctuation. The idea is based on the assumption that enhanced glacial erosion during glacier advances can supply sufficient freshly-exposed rock substrate for incongruent weathering, potentially leading to greater isotopic decoupling between bedrock and dissolved weathering products as recorded in detrital and authigenic εNd, respectively. Thus, it would be worthwhile to take advantage of sedimentary εNd to improve our understanding of past environmental changes in polar regions.