• Korean Journal of Ecology and Environment
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• v.56 no.4
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• pp.320-329
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• 2023

Cadmium (Cd), a heavy metal found in the aquatic environment, accumulates in organisms through the food chain. In the study, we investigated the survival rates, measurement of body Cd levels, and expression analysis of the stress response genes (Heat shock protein 70: HSP70 and Heat shock protein 60: HSP60) and antioxidant enzyme Glutathione S-Transferases (GST) on benthic oligochaete worm Tubifex tubifex exposed three concentrations of Cd, to analyze the bioaccumulation and changes of stress gene expressions to exposure toxicity of the Cd-spiked sediment. Survival rates of T. tubifex exposed to the Cdspiked sediment were 93% at 0.4 mg kg^-1 Cd, 96% at 1.87 mg kg^-1 Cd, and 93% at 6.09 mg kg^-1 Cd for 10 days. Cd concentration in the body of T. tubifex was higher than that in the sediment. After Cd exposures for 10 days, the body Cd levels were 18.4 mg kg^-1, 13.06 mg kg^-1, and 79.11 mg kg^-1 at exposed three concentrations of Cd, respectively. Upregulation of HSP70 gene expression was observed at all concentrations of exposed Cd as a time-dependent manner, whereas transcriptional expression of the HSP60 gene increased as a timedependent manner in T. tubifex exposed to the relative high concentration (6.09 mg kg^-1) of Cd. However, GST gene expression increased on day 1 at all concentrations after Cd exposures, and then downregulated until 10 days. These results indicate to ecotoxicological and molecular effects in benthic oligochaete worm T. tubifex to Cd-spiked sediment and provide the basic information for the utilization of environmental toxicity assessment using the T. tubifex as a aquatic pollution indicator species.

• Korean Journal of Heritage: History & Science
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• v.56 no.3
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• pp.214-232
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• 2023

Stromatolite at the Daegu Catholic University, Gyeongsan was designated as a natural monument in December 2009 because it was very excellent in terms of rarity, accessibility, preservation and scale. From the time of designation, the necessity of confirming the lateral extension of the stromatolite beds with the excavation of the surrounding area, and preparing a preservation plan was raised. Accordingly, the Cultural Heritage Administration conducted an investigation of the scale, production pattern, and weathering state of stromatolites with an excavation from April to December 2022, and based on this, suggested natural heritage values and conservation and use plans. The excavation was carried out in a 1,186m² area surrounding the exposed hemispherical stromatolite (approximately 30m2). Stromatolites are continuously distributed over the entire excavation area, and hemispherical stromatolites predominate in the eastern region, and the distribution and size of hemispherical domes tend to decrease toward the west. These characteristics are interpreted as a result of long-term growth in large-scale lakes, where stratiform or small columnar domes continued to grow and connect with each other, finally forming large domes. Consequently, large and small domes were distributed on the bedding plane in clusters like coral reefs. The growth of plants and lichens, as well as small-scale faults and joints developed on the stromatolite bedding surface, is the main cause of accelerated weathering. However, preservation treatment with chemicals as with dinosaur footprints or dinosaur egg fossil sites is not suitable due to the characteristics of stromatolites, and preservation with the installation of closed protection facilities should be considered. This excavation confirmed that the distribution, size and value of stromatolites are much larger and higher than at the time of designation as a natural monument. Therefore, additional excavation of areas by experts that could not be excavated due to the discovery of buried cultural properties (stone chamber tombs) and reexamination of the expansion designation of natural monuments are required.

• Economic and Environmental Geology
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• v.56 no.6
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• pp.781-797
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• 2023

Recently, there has been a rapid response from mineral-demanding countries for securing critical minerals in a high tech industries. Graphite, while overwhelmingly dominated by China in production, is changing in global supply due to the exponential growth in EV battery sector, with active exploration in East Africa. Rare earth elements are essential raw materials widely used in advanced industries. Globally, there are ongoing developments in the production of REEs from three main deposit types: carbonatite, laterite, and ion-adsorption clay types. While China's production has decreased somewhat, it still maintains overwhelming dominance in this sector. Recent changes over the past few years include the rapid emergence of Myanmar and increased production in Vietnam. Nickel has been used in various chemical and metal industries for a long time, but recently, its significance in the market has been increasing, particularly in the battery sector. Worldwide, nickel deposits can be broadly classified into two types: laterite-type, which are derived from ultramafic rocks, and ultramafic hosted sulfide-type. It is predicted that the development of sulfide-type, primarily in Australia, will continue to grow, while the development of laterite-type is expected to be promoted in Indonesia. This is largely driven by the growing demand for nickel in response to the demand for lithium-ion batteries. The global lithium ores are produced in three main types: brine lake (78%), rock/mineral (19%), and clay types (3%). Rock/mineral type has a slightly higher grade compared to brine lake type, but they are less abundant. Chile, Argentina, and the United States primarily produce lithium from brine lake deposits, while Australia and China extract lithium from both brine lake and rock/mineral sources. Canada, on the other hand, exclusively produces lithium from rock/mineral type. Vanadium has traditionally been used in steel alloys, accounting for approximately 90% of its usage. However, there is a growing trend in the use for vanadium redox flow batteries, particularly for large-scale energy storage applications. The global sources of vanadium can be broadly categorized into two main types: vanadium contained in iron ore (81%) produced from mines and vanadium recovered from by-products (secondary sources, 18%). The primary source, accounting for 81%, is vanadium-iron ores, with 70% derived from vanadium slag in the steel making process and 30% from ore mined in primary sources. Intermediate vanadium oxides are manufactured from these sources. Vanadium deposits are classified into four types: vanadiferous titanomagnetite (VTM), sandstone-hosted, shale-hosted, and vanadate types. Currently, only the VTM-type ore is being produced.

• Korean Journal of Heritage: History & Science
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• v.56 no.4
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• pp.54-70
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• 2023

Surveys and studies on cultural assets using LiDAR measurement are already active overseas. Recently, awareness of the advantages and availability of LiDAR measurement has increased in Korea, and cases of using it for surveys of cultural assets are gradually increasing. However, it is usually restricted to surveys of mountain fortresses and is not actively used for surveys of ancient tombs yet. Therefore, this study intends to emphasize the need to secure fundamental data from LiDAR measurement for the era from the Three Kingdoms to Unified Silla in which recovery, maintenance, etc., in addition to the actual surveys, are unfulfilled due to the sites being mainly distributed in mountainous areas. For this, LiDAR measurement was executed for the area of Jangsan Ancient Tombs and Chunghyo-dong Ancient Tombs in Seoak-dong, Gyeongju, to review the distribution and geographical conditions of ancient tombs. As a result, in the Jangsan Ancient Tombs, in which a precision archaeological (measurement) survey was already executed, detailed geographic information and distribution conditions could be additionally identified, which could not be known only with the layout indicated by the topographic map of the existing report. Also, in the Chunghyo-dong Ancient Tombs, in which an additional survey was not conducted after 10 tombs were found during the Japanese colonial period, the location of the ancient tombs initially excavated was accurately identified, and the status and additional information was acquired, such as on the conditions of ancient tombs not surveyed. Such information may also be used as fundamental data for the preservation and maintenance of future ancient tombs in addition to the survey and study of the ancient tombs themselves. LiDAR measurement is most effective for identifying the condition of ancient tombs in mountainous areas where observation is difficult or access is limited due to the forest zone. It may be executed before on-site surveys, such as archaeological surveys, to secure data with high availability as prior surveys or pre-surveys. Therefore, it is necessary to secure fundamental data from LiDAR measurement in future surveys of ancient tombs and to establish a survey and maintenance/utilization plan based on this. To establish survey/study and preservation/maintenance measures for ancient tombs located in mountainous areas, a precision archaeological survey is currently executed to draw up a distribution chart of ancient tombs. If LiDAR measurement data is secured before this and used, a more effective and accurate distribution chart can be drawn up, and the actual conditions can be identified. Also, most omissions or errors in information can be prevented in on-site surveys of large regions. Therefore, it is necessary to accumulate fundamental data by actively using LiDAR measurement in future surveys of ancient tombs.

• The Journal of Engineering Geology
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• v.33 no.4
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• pp.543-553
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• 2023

The current status of domestic a agalmatolite mines in South Korea was investigated with a view to establishing a stable supply of agalmatolite and managing its demand. Most mined agalmatolite deposits were formed through hydrothermal alteration of Mesozoic volcanic rocks. The physical characteristics of pyrophyllite, the main constituent mineral of agalmatolite, are as follows: specific gravity 2.65~2.90, hardness 1~2, density 1.60~1.80 g/cm³, refractoriness ≥29, and color white, gray, grayish white, grayish green, yellow, or yellowish green. Among the chemical components of domestic agalmatolite, SiO₂ and Al₂O₃ contents are respectively 58.2~67.2 and 23.1~28.8 wt.% for pyrophyllite, 49.2~72.6 and 16.5~31.0 wt.% for pyrophyllite + dickite, 45.1 and 23.3 wt.% for pyrophyllite + illite, 43.1~82.3 and 11.4~35.8 wt.% for illite, and 37.6~69.0 and 19.6~35.3 wt.% for dickite. Domestic agalmatolite mines are concentrated mainly in the southwest and southeast of the Korean Peninsula, with some occurring in the northeast. Twenty-one mines currently produce agalmatolite in South Korea, with reserves in the order of Jeonnam (45.6%) > Chungbuk (30.8%) > Gyeongnam (13.0%) > Gangwon (4.8%), and Gyeongbuk (4.8%). The top 10 agalmatolite-producing mines are in the order of the Central Resources Mine (37.9%) > Wando Mine (25.6%) > Naju Ceramic Mine (13.4%) > Cheongseok-Sajiwon Mine (5.4%) > Gyeongju Mine (5.0%) > Baekam Mine (5.0%) > Minkyung-Nohwado Mine (3.3%) > Bugok Mine (2.3%) > Jinhae Pylphin Mine (2.2%) > Bohae Mine. Agalmatolite has low thermal conductivity, thermal expansion, thermal deformation, and expansion coefficients, low bulk density, high heat and corrosion resistance, and high sterilization and insecticidal efficiency. Accordingly, it is used in fields such as refractory, ceramic, cement additive, sterilization, and insecticide manufacturing and in filling materials. Its scope of use is expanding to high-tech industries, such as water treatment ceramic membranes, diesel exhaust gas-reduction ceramic filters, glass fibers, and LCD panels.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.39 no.6_1
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• pp.1255-1272
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• 2023

Satellite-based chlorophyll-a concentration, produced as a long-term time series, is crucial for global climate change research. The production of data without gaps through the merging of time-synthesized or multi-satellite data is essential. However, studies related to satellite-based chlorophyll-a concentration in the waters around the Korean Peninsula have mainly focused on evaluating seasonal characteristics or proposing algorithms suitable for research areas using a single ocean color sensor. In this study, a merging dataset of remote sensing reflectance from the geostationary sensor GOCI-II and polar-orbiting sensors (MODIS, VIIRS, OLCI) was utilized to achieve high spatial coverage of chlorophyll-a concentration in the waters around the Korean Peninsula. The spatial coverage in the results of this study increased by approximately 30% compared to polar-orbiting sensor data, effectively compensating for gaps caused by clouds. Additionally, we aimed to quantitatively assess accuracy through comparison with global chlorophyll-a composite data provided by Ocean Colour Climate Change Initiative (OC-CCI) and GlobColour, along with in-situ observation data. However, due to the limited number of in-situ observation data, we could not provide statistically significant results. Nevertheless, we observed a tendency for underestimation compared to global data. Furthermore, for the evaluation of practical applications in response to marine disasters such as red tides, we qualitatively compared our results with a case of a red tide in the East Sea in 2013. The results showed similarities to OC-CCI rather than standalone geostationary sensor results. Through this study, we plan to use the generated data for future research in artificial intelligence models for prediction and anomaly utilization. It is anticipated that the results will be beneficial for monitoring chlorophyll-a events in the coastal waters around Korea.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.39 no.6_1
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• pp.1283-1297
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• 2023

Mid-wave infrared (MWIR) imagery, due to its ability to capture the temperature of land cover and objects, serves as a crucial data source in various fields including environmental monitoring and defense. The KOMPSAT-3A satellite acquires MWIR imagery with high spatial resolution compared to other satellites. However, the limited spatial resolution of MWIR imagery, in comparison to electro-optical (EO) imagery, constrains the optimal utilization of the KOMPSAT-3A data. This study aims to create a highly visible MWIR fusion image by leveraging the edge information from the KOMPSAT-3A panchromatic (PAN) image. Preprocessing is implemented to mitigate the relative geometric errors between the PAN and MWIR images. Subsequently, we employ a pre-trained pixel difference network (PiDiNet), a deep learning-based edge information extraction technique, to extract the boundaries of objects from the preprocessed PAN images. The MWIR fusion imagery is then generated by emphasizing the brightness value corresponding to the edge information of the PAN image. To evaluate the proposed method, the MWIR fusion images were generated in three different sites. As a result, the boundaries of terrain and objects in the MWIR fusion images were emphasized to provide detailed thermal information of the interest area. Especially, the MWIR fusion image provided the thermal information of objects such as airplanes and ships which are hard to detect in the original MWIR images. This study demonstrated that the proposed method could generate a single image that combines visible details from an EO image and thermal information from an MWIR image, which contributes to increasing the usage of MWIR imagery.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.39 no.6_1
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• pp.1413-1425
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• 2023

The increasing frequency of wildfires due to climate change is causing extreme loss of life and property. They cause loss of vegetation and affect ecosystem changes depending on their intensity and occurrence. Ecosystem changes, in turn, affect wildfire occurrence, causing secondary damage. Thus, accurate estimation of the areas affected by wildfires is fundamental. Satellite remote sensing is used for forest fire detection because it can rapidly acquire topographic and meteorological information about the affected area after forest fires. In addition, deep learning algorithms such as convolutional neural networks (CNN) and transformer models show high performance for more accurate monitoring of fire-burnt regions. To date, the application of deep learning models has been limited, and there is a scarcity of reports providing quantitative performance evaluations for practical field utilization. Hence, this study emphasizes a comparative analysis, exploring performance enhancements achieved through both model selection and data design. This study examined deep learning models for detecting wildfire-damaged areas using Landsat 8 satellite images in California. Also, we conducted a comprehensive comparison and analysis of the detection performance of multiple models, such as U-Net and High-Resolution Network-Object Contextual Representation (HRNet-OCR). Wildfire-related spectral indices such as normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and normalized burn ratio (NBR) were used as input channels for the deep learning models to reflect the degree of vegetation cover and surface moisture content. As a result, the mean intersection over union (mIoU) was 0.831 for U-Net and 0.848 for HRNet-OCR, showing high segmentation performance. The inclusion of spectral indices alongside the base wavelength bands resulted in increased metric values for all combinations, affirming that the augmentation of input data with spectral indices contributes to the refinement of pixels. This study can be applied to other satellite images to build a recovery strategy for fire-burnt areas.

• Journal of Venture Innovation
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.95-109
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• 2020

The source of value-added creation in modern times has been transformed from material to man's value-added generating power, and ownership of the means of production has been converted from a particular landlord, capitalist to a person with value-added capacity, and a system of capital participation is needed beyond the profit-sharing system or performance incentive system in which workers of an enterprise participate in simple profits if they significantly increase the added value of the company. It is also necessary to introduce our private stock system as a means of addressing the problem of capital bias and for the stable development of capitalism. The purpose of Employee Stock Ownership Plans is to improve the economic and social status of workers and promote labor-management cooperation by allowing workers to acquire and hold shares of the stock company in which the employee ownership association is established through the employee ownership association, but the reality is that our stock ownership system has failed to achieve its purpose due to insufficient protection against the employee. In terms of welfare, the acquisition of our company shares should include active government support for the welfare of workers' ownership on a social welfare level rather than on the logic of the capital market, and in terms of investment, it would not be appropriate to apply the regulation for investor protection to see workers' acquisition of our company shares as 'investment' in the view of workers' willingness to own shares on the stock market. Therefore, as a way to support and deregulate employee's stock acquisition, 1. Expanding direct support, such as tax support, 2. As employee's stock ownership association is being discussed as a division's nature, it is less effective in terms of various management, not investment, and 3. Those who own stocks with 1% of the company's shares and 300 million won in face value will be classified as major shareholders. As a way to reduce the risk of management of our company owners and cooperative funds, As a measure to reduce the risk of management of our company owners and cooperative funds, only our employee shareholders' association shall manage the fund in a long-term deposit, and even though our employee's stock is managed by the association or company after the end of the deposit period, the management of each employee shall be allowed and In terms of improving the utilization of our company's stock and fund, 1. Employee's stockholders are prohibited from lending during the deposit period, but it is necessary to improve profitability by allowing them to borrow under strict restrictions, 2. It is necessary to make the use of the employee's welfare funds available for the preservation of losses, and to stipulate the redemption obligations of unlisted companies in order to improve the redemption system of our company.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.39 no.5_2
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• pp.811-825
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• 2023

In accordance with the government's stance of actively promoting intelligent administrative service policies through data utilization, in the disaster and safety management field, it also is proceeding with disaster and safety management policies utilizing data and constructing systems for responding efficiently to new and complex disasters and establishing scientific and systematic safety policies. However, it is difficult to quickly and accurately grasp the on-site situation in the event of a disaster, and there are still limitations in providing information necessary for situation judgment and response only by displaying vast data. This paper focuses on deriving specific needs to make disaster situation management work more intelligent and efficient by utilizing intelligent information technology. Through individual interviews with workers at the Central Disaster and Safety Status Control Center, we investigated the scope of disaster situation management work and the main functions and usability of the geographic information system (GIS)-based integrated situation management system by practitioners in this process. In addition, the data built in the system was reclassified according to purpose and characteristics to check the status of data in the GIS-based integrated situation management system. To derive needed to make disaster situation management more intelligent and efficient by utilizing intelligent information technology, 3 strategies were established to quickly and accurately identify on-site situations, make data-based situation judgments, and support efficient situation management tasks, and implementation tasks were defined and task priorities were determined based on the importance of implementation tasks through analytic hierarchy process (AHP) analysis. As a result, 24 implementation tasks were derived, and to make situation management efficient, it is analyzed that the use of intelligent information technology is necessary for collecting, analyzing, and managing video and sensor data and tasks that can take a lot of time of be prone to errors when performed by humans, that is, collecting situation-related data and reporting tasks. We have a conclusion that among situation management intelligence strategies, we can perform to develop technologies for strategies being high important score, that is, quickly and accurately identifying on-site situations and efficient situation management work support.