• Journal of Ecology and Environment
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• v.47 no.4
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• pp.272-281
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• 2023

Ecosystem observatories are burgeoning globally in an endeavour to detect national and global scale trends in the state of biodiversity and ecosystems in an era of rapid environmental change. In this paper we highlight the additional importance of regional scale outcomes of such infrastructure, through an introduction to the Great Western Woodlands TERN (Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network) SuperSite, and key findings from three gradient plot networks that are part of this infrastructure. The SuperSite was established in 2012 in the 160,000 km² Great Western Woodlands region, in a collaboration involving 12 organisations. This region is globally significant for its largely intact, diverse landscapes, including the world's largest Mediterranean-climate woodlands and highly diverse sandplain shrublands. The dominant woodland eucalypts are fire-sensitive, requiring hundreds of years to regrow after fire. Old-growth woodlands are highly valued by Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities, and managing impacts of climate change and the increasing extent of intense fires are key regional management challenges. Like other TERN SuperSites, the Great Western Woodlands TERN SuperSite includes a core eddy-covariance flux tower measuring exchanges of carbon, water and energy between the vegetation and atmosphere, along with additional environmental and biodiversity monitoring around the tower. The broader SuperSite incorporates three gradient plot networks. Two of these represent aridity gradients, in sandplains and woodlands, informing regional climate adaptation and biodiversity management by characterising biodiversity turnover along spatial climate gradients and acting as sentinels for ecosystem change over time. For example, the sandplains transect has demonstrated extremely high spatial turnover rates in plant species, that challenge traditional approaches to biodiversity conservation. The third gradient plot network represents a 400-year fire-age gradient in Eucalyptus salubris woodlands. It has enabled characterisation of post-fire recovery of vegetation, birds and invertebrates over multi-century timeframes, and provided tools that are directly informing management to reduce stand-replacing fires in eucalypt woodlands. By building regional partnerships and applying globally or nationally consistent methodologies to regional scale questions, ecological observatories have the power not only to detect national and global scale trends in biodiversity and ecosystems, but to directly inform environmental decisions that are critical at regional scales.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.32 no.7
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• pp.770-783
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• 2011

In this study, we performed a downscaling of an ECHAM5 simulated dataset for the current and future climate produced under the Special Report on Emission Scenarios A1B (SRES A1B) by utilizing the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) Regional Spectral Model (RSM). The current climate simulation was performed for the period 1980-2000 and the future climate run for the period 2040-2070 for the COordinated Regional climate Downscaling EXperiment (CORDEX)'s East Asia domain. The RSM is properly able to reproduce the climatological fields from the evaluation of the current climate simulation. Future climatological precipitation during the summer season is increased over the tropical Oceans, the maritime-continent, and Japan. In winter, on the other hand, precipitation is increased over the tropical Indian Ocean, the maritime-continents and the Western North Pacific, and decreased over the eastern tropical Indian Ocean. For the East Asia region few significant changes are detected in the precipitation climatological field. However, summer rainfall shows increasing trend after 2050 over the region. The future climate ground temperature shows a clear increasing trend in comparison with the current climate. In response to global warming, atmospheric warming is clearly detected, which strengthens the upper level trough.

• Korean Journal of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.399-410
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• 2015

The objective of our study was to predict future cultivation areas for walnut trees (Juglans sinensis), using the cultivation suitability map provided from Korea Forest Service and MaxEnt modelling under future climate conditions. The climate conditions in 2050s and 2070s were computed using the Regional Climate Prediction (RCP) 4.5 and 8.5 scenarios with the HadGEM2-AO model. As a result, compared to the present area, the cultivation area of the western Korea including Chungcheongnamdo, Jeollabuk-do, Jeollanam-do decreased on a national scale under RCP 4.5, and those of Gyeongsangbukdo and part of Gyeongsangnam-do decreased under RCP 8.5. However, Gangwon-do which is located in higher altitude over 600 meters than other regions showed increases in cultivation areas of 18.3% under RCP 4.5 and of 56.6% under RCP 8.5 by 2070s. The predicted map showed large regional variations in the cultivation areas with climate change. From the analysis of current top ranking areas, the cultivation areas in Gimcheon-si and Yeongdong-gun dramatically decreased by 2070s under RCP 4.5 and 8.5; that of Gongju-si decreased more under RCP 4.5; and those of Muju-gun and Cheonan-si sustained the areas by 2070s under both scenarios. The results from this study can be helpful for providing a guide for minimizing the loss of walnut production and proactively improving productivity and quality of walnuts with regard to unavoidable climate change in South Korea.

• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.47 no.2
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• pp.208-225
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• 2012

The spatial characteristics of changes in extreme temperature indices for 2070-2099 relative to 1971-2000 in the Republic of Korea were investigated using daily maximum (Tmax) and minimum (Tmin) temperature data from a regional climate model (HadGEM3-RA) based on the IPCC RCP4.5/8.5 at 12.5km grid spacing and observations. Six temperature-based indices were selected to consider the frequency and intensity of extreme temperature events. For validation during the reference period (1971-2000), the simulated Tmax and Tmin distributions reasonably reproduce annual and seasonal characteristics not only for the relative probability but also the variation range. In the future (2070-2099), the occurrence of summer days (SD) and tropical nights (TR) is projected to be more frequent in the entire region while the occurrence of ice days (ID) and frost days (FD) is likely to decrease. The increase of averaged Tmax above 95th percentile (TX95) and Tmin below 5th percentile (TN5) is also projected. These changes are more pronounced under RCP8.5 scenario than RCP4.5. The changes in extreme temperature indices except for FD show significant correlations with altitude, and the changes in ID, TR, and TN5 also show significant correlations with latitude. The mountainous regions are projected to be more influenced by an increase of low extreme temperature than low altitude while the southern coast is likely to be more influenced by an increase of tropical nights.

• Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.337-350
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• 2009

The phenological change of plants is an indication of local and regional climate change. An increase in temperature due to global warming is manifest in the change of phytophenological events. In this study, trends in the plant phenology and its correlation with air temperature in South Korea were examined using observational data for 18 phenological phases. The spring phenological phases, such as sprouting and flowering, occurred earlier (from 0.7 to 2.7 days per 10-year) during 1945 ${\sim}$2007. while the autumn phases, such as full autumn tinting, moved later (from 3.7 to 4.2 days per 10-year) during 1989 ${\sim}$2007. The correlation between the plant phenology in spring with the air temperature from February to March is relatively high. The warming in the early spring (February March) by $1^{\circ}C$. causes an advance in the spring plant phenology of 3.8 days. The plant phenology in autumn also correlates with the average temperature in October. The autumn plant phenology for a $1^{\circ}C$ increase in October temperature occurs about 3.1 days later.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.188-197
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• 2006

The characteristics of variability of temperature and precipitation in Jeju were investigated using data observed in Jeju station for from 1924 to 2004. Annual mean temperature change for the last 81 years is $0.02^{\circ}C$ increase per year. After 1980, the increase is $0.05^{\circ}C$ per year, larger than the former. The increase of the minimum temperature is larger than that of the maximum temperature in Jeju and has resulted in the increase of mean temperature. The frequency of climate extreme occurrence of temperature and rainfall was also investigated. The temporal variation of frequency of the extremely higher temperature has increased in the 1980's with global warming. The appearance of the extremely lower minimum temperature has decreased during the summers and winters. The facts that the frequencies of rainy days has decreased and heavy rainfall days of more than 80 mm per day in precipitation has increased indicate the increase of rainfall intensity.

• Journal of Korean Society on Water Environment
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• v.33 no.2
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• pp.160-169
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• 2017

The objective of this study are to analyze changes in future rainfall patterns in the Soyang-dam watershed according to the RCP 4.5 scenario of climate change. Second objective is to project peak flow and hourly sediment simulated for the future extreme rainfall events using the SWAT model. For these, accuracy of SWAT hourly simulation for the large scale watershed was evaluated in advance. The results of model calibration showed that simulated peak flow matched observation well with acceptable average relative error. The results of future rainfall pattern changes analysis indicated that extreme storm events will become more severe and frequent as climate change progresses. Especially, possibility of occurrence of large scale extreme storm events will be greater on the periods of 2030-2040 and 2050-2060. In addition, as shown in the SWAT hourly simulation for the future extreme storm events, more severe flood and turbid water can happen in the future compared with the most devastating storm event which occurred by the typhoon Ewiniar in 2006 year. Thus, countermeasures against future extreme storm event and turbid water are needed to cope with climate change.

• The Korean Journal of Applied Statistics
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• v.22 no.6
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• pp.1143-1152
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• 2009

A canonical correlation analysis(CCA)-based method is proposed for prediction of future climate change which combines information from ensembles of atmosphere-ocean general circulation models(AOGCMs) and observed climate values. This paper focuses on predictions of future climate on a regional scale which are of potential economic values. The proposed method is obtained by coupling the classical CCA with empirical orthogonal functions(EOF) for dimension reduction. Furthermore, we generate a distribution of climate responses, so that extreme events as well as a general feature such as long tails and unimodality can be revealed through the distribution. Results from real data examples demonstrate the promising empirical properties of the proposed approaches.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Environmental Restoration Technology
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• v.10 no.6
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• pp.110-119
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• 2007

This study's objects are to predict distribution and to assess vulnerability of sub-alpine vegetations in the Korean peninsula for climate change using various climate models. This study validates relationship between sub-alpine vegetations and environmental factors using Pearson correlation analysis. Then, the future distribution of sub-alpine vegetations are predicted by a logistic regression. The major findings in this study are; First, spring mean temperature (March-May), total precipitation, elevation and warmth index are highly influencing factors to the distribution of sub-alpine vegetations. Second, the sub-alpine vegetations will be disappeared in South Korea and concentrated around Baekdu Mountain in North Korea. North Korea is predicted to have serious impact of climate change because temperature will be increased higher than in South Korea. The study findings concluded that the assessment of the future vulnerability of sub-alpine vegetations to climate change are significant.

• Proceedings of the Korean Quaternary Association Conference
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• 2004.06a
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• pp.26-28
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• 2004