• Journal of the Korean GEO-environmental Society
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.5-17
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• 2020

In recent years, the frequency of heavy rainfall associated with high rainfall intensity has been continuously increasing due to the effects of climate change; and thus also causes an increase in watershed soil erosion. The existing estimation techniques, used for the prediction of soil erosion in Korea have limitations in predicting the: average soil erosion in watersheds, and the soil erosion associated with abnormal short-term rainfall events. Therefore, it is necessary to consider the characteristics of torrential rainfall, and utilize physics-based model to accurately determine the soil erosion characteristics of a watershed. In this study, the rainfall kinetic energy equation, in the form of power function, is proposed by applying the probability density function, to analyze the rainfall particle distribution. The distributed rainfall-erosion model, which utilizes the proposed rainfall kinetic energy equation, was utilized in this study to determine the soil erosion associated with various typhoon events that occurred at Cheoncheon watershed. As a result, the model efficiency parameters of the model for NSE and RMSE are 0.036 and 4.995 ppm, respectively. Therefore, the suggested soil erosion model, coupled with the proposed rainfall-energy estimation, shows accurate results in predicting soil erosion in a watershed due to short-term rainfall events.

• Journal of the Korean GEO-environmental Society
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.5-14
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• 2019

This study attempted to study the soil erosion dynamic in the Bagmati Basin of Nepal. In this study, an inclusive methodology that combines Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation (RUSLE) and GIS techniques was adopted to determine the distribution of soil loss in the study basin. As well, this study attempts to study the intensity of soil erosion in the seven different land use patterns in the Bagmati Basin. Soil loss is an associated phenomenon of hydrologic cycle and this dynamic phenomenon possesses threats to sustainability of basin hydrology, agriculture system, hydraulic structures in operation and overall ecosystem in a long run. Soil conservation works, and various planning and design of watersheds works demands quantification of soil loss. The results of the study in Bagmati Basin shows the total annual soil loss in the basin is 22.93 million tons with an average rate of 75.83T/ha/yr. The computed soil loss risk was divided into five classes from tolerable to severe and the spatial pattern was mapped for easy interpretation. Also, evaluation of soil loss in different land use categories shows barren area has highest rate of soil loss followed by agriculture area. This is a preliminary work and provides erosion risk scenario in the basin. The study can be further used for strategic planning of land use and hydrologic conservation works in a basin.

• Weed & Turfgrass Science
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• v.2 no.4
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• pp.381-386
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• 2013

Recent climatic changes by global warming include increased amount and intensity of rainfall. This study was conducted to find out possible roles of turfgrasses to reduce the impact of climatic changes, especially surface soil erosion. Soil erosions by intensive rain were measured after each significant precipitation from the artificially sloped plots of zoysiagrass, cool-season grass mixture of Kentucky bluegrass and perennial ryegrass and other typical korean summer crops. Sodded zoysiagrass resulted in minimal annual soil erosion followed by strip-sodded zoysiagrass and cool-season turfgrass mixture while dry-field rice and bean cultivations eroded the surface soils of 5 to 10 MT $ha^{-1}yr^{-1}$ and pepper cultivation resulted in 7 to 14 MT $ha^{-1}yr^{-1}$ annual loss of surface soil. Annual loss of surface soil from bare land with hand weeding was up to 18 MT $ha^{-1}yr^{-1}$ while greatly reduced soil erosion was observed from weed grown treatment.

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.48 no.7
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• pp.595-604
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• 2015

Interrill erosion by the rainfall is divided into a detachment of soil particles by raindrop splash when raindrops having kinetic energy strike on the surface soil and a sediment transport by sheet flow of surface runoff. Rainfall kinetic energy is widely used as an indicator expressing the potential ability to separate the soil particles from soil mass. In this study, the soil erosion experiments of rainfall simulation were operated to evaluate the effects of rainfall kinetic energy on interrill erosion as using the strip cover to control raindrop impact. The kinetic energy from rainfall simulator was 0.58 times to that of natural rainfall. Surface runoff and subsurface runoff increased and decreased respectively with increase of rainfall intensity. Surface runoff discharge from plots of non-cover was 1.82 times more than that from plots with cover. The rainfall kinetic energy influenced on the starting time of surface and subsurface runoff. Soil erosion quantity greatly varied according to existence of the surface cover that can intercept rainfall energy. Sediment yields by the interaction between raindrop splash and sheet flow increased 3.6~5.9 times and the increase rates of those decreased with rainfall intensity. As a results from analysis of relationship between stream power and sediment yields, rainfall kinetic energy increased the transport capacity according to increase of surface runoff as well as the detachment of soil particles by raindrop splash.

• The Journal of the Korea institute of electronic communication sciences
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.543-552
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• 2020

This study is aimed at determining an algorithm capable of estimating the erosion index of rainfall for the region of Maceió-Alagoas in the northeast of Brazil. The sample of the truncated data from 2003 to 2006 counts 26,889 droplet size distributions integrated per minute, with 680 rain events with duration longer than 10 minutes. The equation proposed to estimate erosion index used as a dependent variable and independent variable, presenting a coefficient of determination of 99%. The statistical significance validated the relation between minimum rainfall intensity and erosion.

• Journal of The Korean Society of Agricultural Engineers
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• v.58 no.6
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• pp.55-69
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• 2016

RUSLE (Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation) is the empirical formular widely used to estimate rates of soil erosion caused by rainfall and associated overland flow. Among the factors considered in RUSLE, rainfall erosivity factor (R factor) is the major one derived by rainfall intensity and characteristics of rainfall event. There has been developed various methods to estimate R factor, such as energy based methods considering physical schemes of soil erosion and simple methods using the empirical relationship between soil erosion and annual total rainfall. This study is aimed to quantitatively evaluate the variation among the R factors estimated using different methods for South Korea. Station based observation (minutely rainfall data) were collected for 72 stations to investigate the characteristics of rainfall events over the country and similarity and differentness of R factors calculated by each method were compared in various ways. As results use of simple methods generally provided greater R factors comparing to those for energy based methods by 76 % on average and also overestimated the range of factors using different equations. The variation coefficient of annual R factors was calculated as 0.27 on average and the results significantly varied by the stations. Additionally the study demonstrated the rank of methods that would provide exclusive results comparing to others for each station. As it is difficult to find universal way to estimate R factors for specific regions, the efforts to validate and integrate various methods are required to improve the applicability and accuracy of soil erosion estimation.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.22 no.5
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• pp.83-91
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• 2006

Recently, the intensive rainstorm possibly induced by global warming plays a key role on the instability of railway adjacent slopes. The instability of slopes results as covering and loss of railway lines induced by slided soil mass. According to the site investigation on the failed slopes triggered by rainfall, low types of slope failure were observed: shallow, intermediate, gully erosion, and soil-rock interface failures. The observation reveals the different characteristics of slope failure depending on the thickness of soil layer, morphological features of slope, etc. Based upon the observations, flume tests were conducted to analyze the sliding mechanism of each failure. The variables of flume test are soil layer thickness, rainfall intensity, and morphology of slope under the constant condition of the percentage of fine, initial soil moisture content, slope angle and compaction energy. Test results show that shallow failure was mostly observed from the surface of the slope and caused by the soil erosion; in addition, compared to the other types of failure, the occurrence of initial erosion is late, however, the development of erosion is fast. In gully erosion failure, the collected water from the water catchment area helps erosion of the upper soil layer and transfer of residual corestone, which impedes the erosion process once the upper soil layers are eroded and corestone are exposed. The soil-rock interface failure shows the most fast initial erosion process among the failure types. Interestingly, the common feature observed from the different types of failure was the occurrence of the initial deformation near the toe of slopes which implies the existence of surbsurface flow along the downslope direction.

• Journal of Korean Society on Water Environment
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• v.28 no.3
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• pp.375-383
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• 2012

Soil erosion has been emphasized as serious environmental problem affecting water quality in the receiving waterbodies. Recently, Best Management Practices (BMPs) have been applied at a field to reduce soil erosion and its effectiveness in soil erosion reduction has been monitored with various methods. Although monitoring at fields/watershed outlets would be accurate way for these ends, it is not possible at some fields/watersheds due to various limitations in direct monitoring. Thus modeling has been suggested as an alternative way to evaluate effects of the BMPs. Most models, which have been used in evaluating hydrology and water quality at a watershed, could not reflect rainfall intensity in runoff generation and soil erosion processes. In addition, source codes of these models are not always public for modification/enhancement. Thus, runoff-sediment evaluation system using hourly rainfall data and vegetated filter strip (VFS) evaluation module at field level were developed using open source MapWindow GIS component in this study. This evaluation system was applied to Bangdongri, Chuncheonsi to evaluate its prediction ability and VFS module in this study. The NSE and $R^2$ values for runoff estimation were 0.86 and 0.91, respectively, and measured and simulated sediment yield were 15.2 kg and 16.5 kg indicating this system, developed in this study, can be used to simulate runoff and sediment yield with acceptable accuracies. Nine VFS scenarios were evaluated for effectiveness of soil erosion reduction. Reduction efficiency of the VFS was high when sediment inflow was small. As shown in this study, this evaluation system can be used for evaluation BMPs with local rainfall intensity and variations considered with ease-of-use GIS interface.

• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
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• v.32 no.11
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• pp.1024-1029
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• 2010

Use of polymeric soil amendments is an emerging way to reduce soil erosion, and improve crop productivity and soil quality. Objective of this study was to evaluate the effects of anionic polyacrylamide (PAM) and synthetic biopolymer on soil erosion, crop growth and soil quality. The aqueous solutions of PAM and biopolymer at 40 kg/ha were applied to loamy soil plots (3 m width by 18 m long) having a 20% slope during radish (Raphanus sativus) cultivation. Results showed that PAM and biopolymer treatments increased aggregate stability up to 11% compared to the untreated control. Treatments of PAM and biopolymer also increased leaf length of radish but there was no significant difference in crop yield. Soil loss was decreased by up to 41% using the polymeric soil amendments; however, no difference in runoff was found, compared to the untreated control. Soil loss was logarithmically increased against an increase in rainfall intensity ($R^2=0.85$). Our findings suggest that proper use of polymeric soil amendments would be beneficial to maintain soil quality and reduce soil erosion in sloping uplands.

• Journal of Korean Society of Forest Science
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• v.99 no.4
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• pp.534-545
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• 2010

To examine 1) rainfall pattern (i.e., type and intensity) regulating surface erosion on hillslopes in postwildfire area and 2) its effect on variation in sediment yield along the gradient of severity wildfire regimes and elapsed years, we surveyed the amount of sediment yield with respect to daily or net-effective rainfall in 9 plots in eastern coastal region, Republic of Korea. Before field investigation, all plots classified into three groups: low-, mixed- and high-severity wildfire regimes (3 plots in each group). We found that, with decreasing wildfire regimes and increasing elapsed years, the rainfall type regulating surface erosion changed from daily rainfall to net-effective rainfall (considering rainfall continuity) and its intensity increased continuously. In general, wildfires can destroy the stabilized forest floors, and thus rainfall interception by vegetation and litter layer should be reduced. Wildfires can also decrease soil pores in forest floors, and thus infiltration rates of soil are reduced. These two processes lead to frequent occurrence of overland flows required to surface erosion, and sediment yields in post-wildfire areas should increase linearly with increasing rainfall events. With the decreasing severity wildfire regimes and the increasing elapsed years, these processes should be stabilized, and therefore their sediment yields also decreased. Our findings on variations in sediment yields caused by the wildfire regimes and the elapsed years suggest understanding of hydrogeomorphic and ecologic diversities in post-wildfire areas, and these should be carefully examined for both watershed management and disaster prevention.