• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
• /
• v.40 no.2 s.175
• /
• pp.183-190
• /
• 2007

Soil layer in vegetation filter strip is one of the very important factor for reduction of non-point pollutants by physical, chemical and biological reactions of it through infiltration process. This study was carried out to prepare more effective vegetation filter strip through modification of soil layer for river water quality improvement. Therefore, the main aims of this study are to compare and evaluate normal (straighten type) and modified (step type) vegetation filter strip, which make artificially change the soil layer to improve infiltration ability, through bench scale experiments. In the results of this study, vegetation filter strip of step type is much more highly reduction effectiveness of pollutants in surface flow compared with normal vegetation filter strip. In case of below effluent, however, it appeared that the vegetation filter strip modified soil layer showed lower reduction effectiveness of pollutants than the general vegetation filter strip. This result was judged because effluent through the vegetation filter strip of step type passed bigger size of aggregate or sand than the vegetation filter strip of straighten type. If we compare it as a definition of pollutant load to estimate total amount of reduced pollutants by vegetation filter strip, reduced pollutants load by step type showed higher than those by straighten type because below effluent amount relied on total effluent amount was higher at step type (4%) than at straighten type (2%). In conclusion, the vegetation filter strip of step type to improve infiltration effect is much more reduction effectiveness of pollutants than vegetation filter strip of straighten type.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
• /
• v.16 no.1
• /
• pp.140-150
• /
• 2016

This study aims to investigate the effect of vegetation type, length of vegetative filter strip, and rainfall on trapping efficiency of the non-point source water pollution. Numerical experiments are carried out using VFSMOD-w. It is known from this study that the vegetation having the same value of revised Manning roughness coefficient shows the similar trapping efficiency in VFSMOD-w. When the length of vegetative filter strip increases twice, the trapping efficiency increases negligibly small under the same condition of rainfall. From this finding, it is also known that most of sediment are removed within a certain length of vegetative filter strips. It is concluded that the installation of vegetative filter strip is determined under the consideration of the rainfall characteristics, space of vegetation, and length of vegetative filter strip.

• Journal of Korean Society on Water Environment
• /
• v.24 no.4
• /
• pp.473-479
• /
• 2008

Environment problem has been arising in many countries. Especially, soil erosion has been deemed as one of the biggest issues because sediment causes muddy water and pollutants, such as agricultural chemicals, flow in the stream with this sediment. Many studies, regarding soil loss and non-point source pollution from watershed, has been performed while serious problem has been known. Soil loss occurred in most agricultural area by rainfall and runoff. It makes hydraulic structure unstable, causes environmental economical problems because muddy water destroys ecosystem and causes intake water deterioration. As revealing serious effects of muddy water by sediment, many researches have been doing with various methods. Hydraulic structures establishments such as soil erosion control dams and grit chamber are common. Vegetative filter strip is investigated in this study because vegetative filter strip is designed for reducing sediment from upland areas of the watershed, and it has many functions, not only sediment reduction but also runoff water quality improvement and wildlife habitat. With these positive functions of the vegetative filter strip, the study about vegetative filter strip has been increasing for reducing sediment because it is more effective than hydraulic structures from an environmental perspective. But the sediment trapping efficiency by vegetative filter strip, needs to be investigated and designed first. Therefore the model, VFSMOD-W, was used in this study as it can estimate sediment trapping efficiency of vegetative filter strip under various field, vegetation, weather condition. Sensitive factors to sediment trapping efficiency are studied with VFSMOD-W, and sediment trapping efficiency equation has been derived using two most sensitive factors. It is thought that the equation suggested in this study can be used in Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT), to overcome the limit of SWAT filter strip module, which is based solely on filter strip width.

• Journal of The Korean Society of Agricultural Engineers
• /
• v.64 no.4
• /
• pp.1-10
• /
• 2022

A vegetative filter strip (VFS) is one of the best management practices (BMPs) to reduce pollutant loads. This study aims to assess the effectiveness of VFS in dense upland field areas. The study areas are agricultural fields in the Maedae (MD), Gaa (GA), and Jaun (JU) watersheds, where severe sediment yields have occurred and the Korean government has designated them as non-point management regions. The agricultural fields were divided into three or four clusters for each watershed based on their slope, slope length, and area (e.g., MD1, MD2). To assess the sediment trapping (STE) and pesticide reduction efficiency (PRE) of VFS, the Vegetative Filter Strip Modeling System (VFSMOD) was applied with three different scenarios (SC) (SC1: VFS with rye vegetation; SC2: VFS with rye vegetation and a gentle slope in VFS range; and SC3: VFS with grass mixture). For SC1, there were relatively short slope lengths and small areas in the MD1 and GA3 clusters, and they showed higher pollutant reduction (STE>50%, PRE>25%). For SC2 and SC3, all clusters in GA and some clusters (MD1 and MD3) in MD show higher pollutant reduction (>25%), while the uplands in JU still show a lower pollutant (<25%). With correlation analysis between geographic characteristics and VFS effectiveness slope and slope length showed relative higher correlations with the pollutant efficiency than a area. The results of this study implied that slope and slope length should be considered to find suitable upland conditions for VFS installations.

• Korean Journal of Ecology and Environment
• /
• v.40 no.2
• /
• pp.264-272
• /
• 2007

Runoff of non-point pollutants has affected bad influence to water quality of river as reaching within short time. For this reason, reducing them prior to reaching aquatic systems or treating them after collection from discharge process of pollutants are desirable for efficient treatment of pollutants. This study was carried out to develop an ecotechnological method to prevent further aggravation of water quality by non-point source through vegetation filter strips. This study has placed a focus on improving infiltration capacity of soil for the optimum condition of vegetation filter strips. Therefore, we used titled soil filter strips instead of vegetation filter strips in this study. The three types of soil tilter strips were used in a bench scale experiment before applying to the field. The reduction efficiency of pollutants in soil filter strips (SS $84.5{\sim}92.5%$, BOD $67.9{\sim}80.6%$, T-N $43.4{\sim}76.6%$, T-P $40.6{\sim}87.4%$, Cu $28.3{\sim}48.1%$ Fe $92.1{\sim}97.7%$, Pb $81.4{\sim}97.3%$) was much higher than that of the controled group. And non-point pollutants reduction efficiency by soil filter strip's forms was estimated to be distinguishing in order of bio material, mixture of sand and gravel and lastly the whole gravel. In the event, the whole reduction efficiency of pollutants on the soil filter strips disclosed good results.

• Journal of Korean Society on Water Environment
• /
• v.33 no.3
• /
• pp.247-255
• /
• 2017

This research was conducted to analyze removal efficiencies of non-point pollution source (NPS) in low impact development (LID) facilities with vegetation. In this research, removal efficiencies of NPS were calculated using rainfall monitoring data for 5 years in grassed swale (GS) and vegetative filter strip (VFS). TSS was greater than other pollutants, and it ranged 11.9 ~ 351.7 mg/L in GS and 12.8 ~ 350.7 mg/L in VFS. Outflow EMCs were reduced than inflow EMCs, overall removal efficiencies of NPS were 67 ~ 86% in GS and 63 ~ 91% in VFS. 50 % reduction efficiency of rainfall runoff was observed between inflow and outflow in each LID facility. TSS removal efficiency in GS and VFS was correlated with rainfall characteristics. The rainfall for TSS removal efficiency over 50% was determined about 31 mm, 34 mm and average rainfall intensity was 3.0 mm/hr, 3.9 mm/hr in GS and VFS. Therefore, GS and VFS were regarded effective LID facilities as removal of pollutants and rainfall runoff. Also, this research result can be used as an important data for management of NPS.

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
• /
• v.47 no.10
• /
• pp.973-983
• /
• 2014

This study focused on the selection of appropriate plant species of VFS (vegetative fiter strips) and the assessment of VFS effects for reducing NPS (non-point source) pollution from uplands. The experimental field was constructed with 1 control and 6 treated plots in the upland area of $1,500m^2$ with 5% slope which is located in Gunwi-gun, Gyeongbuk province. Six vegetation including Chufa, Common crabgrass, Barnyard grass, Turf grass, Tall fescue, Kenturky bluegrass, were applied to install VFS systems during the study period from June 2011 to Dec. 2012. The results of this study showed that 6.1~77.8% in runoff and 15.6~90.3% in TS, 49.9~96.6% in T-P, and 6.7~91.1% in T-N were reduced from the VFS treated plots. Generally high reduction effects were observed from TS, T-P, T-N, and SS, while BOD, TOC, and $NO_3^-$ showed low reductions. The best vegetation type was Turf grass showing higher reduction effects of NPS pollutions and having relatively easier maintenance efforts compared to other vegetations selected in this study. Based on these results, VFS technique found to be an effective management practice for reducing agricultural NPS pollutions in Korean upland conditions. Further study needs to be performed through various field experiments with long term monitoring in order to develop a design manual of VFS system for practical applications.

• Journal of The Korean Society of Agricultural Engineers
• /
• v.56 no.5
• /
• pp.89-99
• /
• 2014

The goal of this study was to evaluate sediment reduction effects of VFS (vegetative filter strip) applied for Iksan area in Saemangeum watershed. This study simulated runoff and sediment load from different types of uplands using VFSMOD-W. The general upland characteristics of the study area was investigated to build reasonable scenarios of the simulation. The simulation scenarios were designed by various areas, shapes, and slopes of uplands. Grass mixture was selected as VFS vegetation and the size of VFS was fixed as 10 % of uplands area. Additionally 50mm, 100mm, 150mm of daily rainfall were applied for the runoff and sediment simulation. As results, the calculated runoff and sediment loads were obtained $20.7{\sim}1,030.6m^3$ and 568.4~675,731.4 kg for the range of 0.1~1.0 ha of uplands with 7 % and 15 % slopes. The reduction effects on runoff and sediment were obtained 5~10 % and 21.0~47.7 % respectively from VFS applications. The VFSMOD-W simulations showed that runoff tended to increase as upland area and amount of rainfall increased while sediment increased when slope, length and area of uplands and amount of rainfall increased. These results indicated that rainfall amount and upland size are the critical factors for the generation of runoff and sediment load. In order to support this conclusion, further studies such as, long term monitoring, field experiments, and to calibrate and evaluate the model are necessary.