• Journal of Wetlands Research
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.315-325
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• 2023

This study analyzed the disturbance process of river wetlands based on modern and contemporary maps and aerial photographs, and analyzed land cover and NDVI changes in the hydro-ecological impact zone around the Wangjin District. A stable sandbar was formed near Wangjinnaru and was naturally connected to the agricultural land within inland, but after the sandbar and river wetland were destroyed due to heavy floods, embankment construction, land readjustment, and comprehensive river management, artificial replaced wetlands and ecological parks were created, and sandbars in the form of river island were restored again. The change in land cover in the hydro-ecological impact zone showed that rice paddies and fields in agricultural areas decreased from 36.3% in 2013 to 22.9% in 2022, with the largest change in area to 814,476m². It was confirmed that the land cover was undergoing vegetation over time. Since the vegetation condition is good, a healthy food chain is formed in the waterfront ecosystem, which can be expected to be biodiversity-positive. Summarizing seasonal changes in the vegetation index, the overall change in the vegetation index was the largest in spring (March), followed by summer (June), and the change in autumn (September) was the smallest except for water. By land use, the overall vegetation index (NDVI) increased, including 39.1% improvement in alternative wetlands, 38.2% improvement in load, 44.3% improvement in ecological parks, 35.6% improvement in agricultural areas, and -8.1% decrease in water.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Environmental Restoration Technology
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• v.26 no.6
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• pp.67-84
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• 2023

In some areas of the Republic of Korea, the designation and management of conservation areas do not adequately reflect regional characteristics and often impose behavioral regulations without considering the local context. One prominent example is the Busan EDC area. As a result, conflicts may arise, including large-scale civil complaints, regarding the conservation and utilization of these areas. Therefore, for the efficient designation and management of protected areas, it is necessary to consider various ecosystem factors, changes in land use, and regional characteristics. In this study, we specifically focused on the Busan EDC area and applied machine learning techniques to analyze the habitat of regional species. Additionally, we employed Explainable Artificial Intelligence techniques to interpret the results of our analysis. To analyze the regional characteristics of the waterfront area in the Busan EDC district and the habitat of migratory birds, we used bird observations as dependent variables, distinguishing between presence and absence. The independent variables were constructed using land cover, elevation, slope, bridges, and river depth data. We utilized the XGBoost (eXtreme Gradient Boosting) model, known for its excellent performance in various fields, to predict the habitat probabilities of 11 bird species. Furthermore, we employed the SHapley Additive exPlanations technique, one of the representative methodologies of XAI, to analyze the relative importance and impact of the variables used in the model. The analysis results showed that in the EDC business district, as one moves closer to the river from the waterfront, the likelihood of bird habitat increases based on the overlapping habitat probabilities of the analyzed bird species. By synthesizing the major variables influencing the habitat of each species, key variables such as rivers, rice fields, fields, pastures, inland wetlands, tidal flats, orchards, cultivated lands, cliffs & rocks, elevation, lakes, and deciduous forests were identified as areas that can serve as habitats, shelters, resting places, and feeding grounds for birds. On the other hand, artificial structures such as bridges, railways, and other public facilities were found to have a negative impact on bird habitat. The development of a management plan for conservation areas based on the objective analysis presented in this study is expected to be extensively utilized in the future. It will provide diverse evidential materials for establishing effective conservation area management strategies.

• Journal of the Korea Organic Resources Recycling Association
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.56-64
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• 2001

Composting of livestock feces is economic and safe process to decrease the possibility of direct leakage of organic pollutants to ecosystem from commercial and environmental point of view. This study was conducted with three different experiments related to composting of livestock feces. The purpose of experiment 1 was to investigate changes of characteristic of compost pile during composting period by low temperature in cold season. To compare composting effect of experimental compost pile and control pile exposed in cold air, experimental compost piles were warmed up by hot air until their temperatures were reached at $35^{\circ}C$. Sawdust, Ricehull and Ricestraw were mixed with livestock feces as bulking agent. The highest temperatures of compost pile during composting period were in sawdust, rice hull, rice straw, and control were $75^{\circ}C$, $76^{\circ}C$, $68^{\circ}C$, $45^{\circ}C$ respectively. Moisture content, pH, C/N and volume of compost were decreased during composting period. Experiment 2 was carried out to study utilization effect of compost by plant. A corn was cultivated for 3 years on fertilized land with compost and chemical fertilizer. The amount of harvest and nutrition value of corn were analyzed. In first year of trial, the amount of harvest of corn on land treated with compost was lower by 20% than that of land treated with chemical fertilizer. In second year, there was no difference in yield of com between compost and chemical fertilizer. In third year, the yield of com on land fertilized with compost was much more than that of land fertilized with chemical fertilizer. The purpose of experiment 3 was to estimate the decrease of malodorous gas originating from livestock feces by bio-filter. Four types of bio-filters filled with saw dust, night soil, fermented compost and leaf mold were manufactured and tested. Each bio-filter achieved 87-95% $NH_3$ removal efficiency. This performance was maintained for 10 days. The highest $NH_3$ removal efficiency was achieved by leaf mold on the first day of operation period. It reduced the concentration of $NH_3$ by about 95%. Night soil and fermented compost showed nearly equal performance of 93 to 94% for 10 days from the beginning of operation. The concentration of hydrogen sulfide and methyl mercaptan originating for compost were equal to or less than $3mg/{\ell}$ and $2mg/{\ell}$, respectively. After passing throughout the bio-filter, hydrogen sulfide and methyl mercaptan were not detected.

• Korean Journal of Environmental Agriculture
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• v.40 no.4
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• pp.279-289
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• 2021

BACKGROUND: Recently, the golden apple snail, Pomacea canaliculata has been used as an environmentally-friendly weed-control agent in rice farming. Although effective for this particular style of farming, P. canaliculata can be destructive to other crops. The objective of this study was to identify overwintering as well as regional and seasonal distribution characteristics of P. canaliculata. Notably, winter is typically fatal for P. canaliculata. However, owing to increasing average global temperatures, we assessed the ability of P. canaliculata to survive through uncharacteristically warm winters. METHODS AND RESULTS: To examine the distribution and overwintering regions of P. canaliculata, We conducted a survey from April 2020 to May 2021 on environmentally-friendly rice fields, agricultural waterways, and streams in 23 cities belonging to 8 provinces. In addition, because air temperature may influence the distribution density of P. canaliculata, we analyzed the winter temperature data (http://weather.rda.go.kr). CONCLUSION(S): In 2021, overwintering of P. canaliculata (1-3 individuals/m²) was observed in the Goheung and Yeongam regions in Jeonnam. Overwintering of P. canaliculata was observed in fewer regions in 2021 than in 2020; this fact may be attributed to the lower minimum temperatures measured in 2021 (approximately 8℃ lower) than those in 2020. Our results suggest that overwintering occurs as long as overnight temperatures are ≥ -15℃, but can take place if temperatures are as low as -19℃.

• Korean Journal of Soil Science and Fertilizer
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• v.39 no.5
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• pp.321-327
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• 2006

In Korea, there is a growing competitive for water resources between industrial, domestic and agricultural consumer, and the environment as many other OECD countries. The demand on water use is also affecting aquatic ecosystems particularly where withdrawals are in excess of minimum environmental needs for rivers, lakes and wetland habits. OECD developed three indicators related to water use by the agriculture in above contexts : the first is a water use intensity indicator, which is expressed as the quantity or share of agricultural water use in total national water utilization; the second is a water stress indicator, which is expressed as the proportion of rivers (in length) subject to diversion or regulation for irrigation without reserving a minimum of limiting reference flow; and the third is a water use efficiency indicator designated as the technical and the economic efficiency. These indicators have different meanings in the aspect of water resource conservation and sustainable water use. So, it will be more significant that the indicators should reflect the intrinsic meanings of them. The problem is that the aspect of an overall water flow in the agro-ecosystem and recycling of water use not considered in the assessment of agricultural water use needed for calculation of these water use indicators. Namely, regional or meteorological characteristics and site-specific farming practices were not considered in the calculation of these indicators. In this paper, we tried to calculate water use indicators suggested in OECD and to modify some other indicators considering our situation because water use pattern and water cycling in Korea where paddy rice farming is dominant in the monsoon region are quite different from those of semi-arid regions. In the calculation of water use intensity, we excluded the amount of water restored through the ground from the total agricultural water use because a large amount of water supplied to the farm was discharged into the stream or the ground water. The resultant water use intensity was 22.9% in 2001. As for water stress indicator, Korea has not defined nor monitored reference levels of minimum flow rate for rivers subject to diversion of water for irrigation. So, we calculated the water stress indicator in a different way from OECD method. The water stress indicator was calculated using data on the degree of water storage in agricultural water reservoirs because 87% of water for irrigation was taken from the agricultural water reservoirs. Water use technical efficiency was calculated as the reverse of the ratio of irrigation water to a standard water requirement of the paddy rice. The efficiency in 2001 was better than in 1990 and 1998. As for the economic efficiency for water use, we think that there are a lot of things to be taken into considerations to make a useful indicator to reflect socio-economic values of agricultural products resulted from the water use. Conclusively, site-specific, regional or meteorogical characteristics as in Korea were not considered in the calculation of water use indicators by methods suggested in OECD(Volume 3, 2001). So, it is needed to develop a new indicators for the indicators to be more widely applicable in the world.

• The Korean Journal of Pesticide Science
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.256-261
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• 2009

Molinate (S-ethyl hexahydro-1H-azepine-1-carbothioate), a selective, preemergence thiocarbamate herbicide used for grass weed control in rice fields, is being most widely used in Korea. This study was conducted to assess the comparative toxicity of molinate on two aquatic insects, Chironomus riparius and Cloeon dipterum in four larval stages. First-instar larvae of C. riparius appeared to be the most sensitive to acute exposure of molinate with a 48-h $EC_{50}$ of 7.8 mg/L, followed by third instar (48-h $EC_{50}\;=\;22.9\;mg/L$), second instar (48-h $EC_{50}\;=\;25.0\;mg/L$) and fourth instar (48-h $EC_{50}$ > 50 mg/L) larvae. Also, the sensitivity of the larvae of C. dipterum was presented as the same manner of the larvae of C. riparius. The youngest group of larvae of C. riparius appeared to be the most sensitive to molinate, with 96-h $EC_{50}$ values ranged from 14.3 to 24.1 mg/L. The authors assume that the young instar lavae of aquatic insects, Chironomus riparius and Cloeon dipterum are more sensitive to molinate. Also, the authors propose that Mayfly, Cloeon dipterum is well suited as a bioassay organism because it is one of the most vulnerable aquatic insects inhabiting agricultural ecosystem in Korea.