Characterization of bacterial communities associated with seasonal water masses from Tongyoung in South Sea of Korea

Understanding the patterns of microbial diversity and their composition in seawater is necessary to assess the impacts of microbes on marine ecosystem. Although the potential roles of microbes in the ocean have been studied, their diversity and relationship with environmental factors remain unclear. In this study, we adopted a 16S rRNA gene tag-pyrosequencing technique to investigate the bacterial communities associated with two different water masses from Tongyoung in the South Sea of Korea. Our results revealed highly diverse bacterial communities up to 900 Operational Taxonomic Units (OTUs) estimated from each seawater which was collected in the month of March and May, when the environmental conditions including temperature differed significantly: 7.2°C and 17.6°C in March and May, respectively. Altogether, 13 bacterial phyla were recovered from the seawater, of which Proteobacteria was the most dominant group. In addition, the value of the Shannon index, which measures the evenness of the distribution of individuals among OTUs, in May is higher than that in March, indicating that it displays a wider diversity of bacteria. Interestingly, the proportion of pathogenic bacteria was significantly increased in the month of May compared to March, suggesting that pathogenic bacteria were increasingly emerging in May. In particular, Pseudoalteromonas and Vibrio spp. were determined as major pathogenic bacteria from both water masses, of which Vibrio spp. were dominant.     

Veterinary antibiotics contamination in water, sediment, and soil near a swine manure composting facility

Antibiotics have been commonly used to prevent animal diseases and promote livestock productivity. However, its release into the surrounding environments leads to ecological disturbance and risks to human health. This study was conducted to monitor the occurrence and seasonal variations of antibiotics in water, sediment, and soil close to a swine manure composting facility, Korea. Various types of antibiotics such as tetracyclines (TCs) including tetracycline, chlortetracycline, and oxytetracycline, and sulfonamides (SAs) including sulfamethazine, sulfamethoxazole, and sulfathiazole were measured by the high-performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry via a solid-phase extraction. In the results it was identified that the variations of measured antibiotics’ concentrations in water, sediment, and soil are depending on the season. The observed concentration levels of TCs were higher in winter than in summer season, indicating that the low temperature is a parameter attributing to interruption of its degradation in water, sediment, and soil. The concentration levels of SAs were significantly higher than those of TCs and in general, all measured antibiotics’ concentrations were also in general higher in Korea when compared to those in other countries. The long-term monitoring of antibiotics’ residues in aquatic and terrestrial environments is necessary.     

Direct flows from the Ulleung Basin into the Yamato Basin in the East/Japan Sea

Using the trajectories of ARGO floats, we report direct flows from the Ulleung Basin into the Yamato Basin through a gap between the Oki Spur and the Yamato Rise over the southern part of the East/Japan Sea. The gap is subdivided into two narrow (northern and southern) passages by a seamount located in the middle. The flows, therefore, are narrow and this explains why this flow was not reported earlier. More than half of the 25 ARGO floats, which operated around the gap, drifted through the gap or area near it. The strength of the throughflow estimated using the trajectories of the floats at parking depth is comparable to the mean deep flow found over the southwestern part of the East/Japan Sea. A high resolution regional ocean model whose overall circulation pattern over the Ulleung Basin is consistent with those from previous studies shows that the flow through the gap is supplied mainly by eastward flows crossing the mouth of the basin, and secondarily by the cyclonic circulation following the outer perimeter of the basin. Thus the throughflow is an important component of the deep circulation over the southern East/Japan Sea, and the narrow gap, where the flow is well confined, would be a good place to study the deep circulation.     

First report on the occurrence of the comb pen shell,Atrina pectinata (Linnaeus, 1767) (Bivalvia: Pinnidae) in Ulleungdo Island in the East Sea: Ecology and molecular identification of the species using COI gene sequence

Pen shell is one of the largest marine bivalves inhabiting shallow subtidal soft bottoms in the west Pacific and Indian Oceans. In Korea, the comb pen shell Atrina pectinata fisheries has been established on the south and west coasts. Recently, a pen shell population has been discovered from a subtidal sand flat (25–30 m depth) in Ulleungdo Island located in the East Sea of Korea, suggesting a potential shellfish resource in this area. In the present study, we first surveyed the population density and size of the unique pen shell using SCUBA, and identified the pen shell to species level using mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase I gene (COI) sequence. An underwater survey carried out from July to September 2013 revealed that populations of pen shell patched on subtidal sand flat at a depth of 20–25 m. Grain size analysis indicated that sand particles accounted for 99% of the 600 × 700 m sand flat. The underwater survey also indicated that density of the pen shell ranged between 6–19 ind/m², with a mean of 11 ind/m². Shell height (i.e. longest axis of the shell) of the pen shell on the sand flat varied between 17.2 cm to 28.8 cm, with a mean of 25.1 cm, and the age was estimated to range between 1.5–7.5 yrs, with a mean of 5 yr. COI DNA sequence obtained from the pen shell in this study showed 98.9–99.2% similarity to Atrina pectinata (Linnaeus 1767) reported from Japan. In the cluster analysis, the COI DNA sequence of the pen shells from Ulleungdo Island was grouped with A. pectinata reported from Japan and China, indicating that the pen shell discovered in this study was A. pectinata, commonly distributed on the west and south coasts of Korea.     

A review of the National Groundwater Monitoring Network in Korea

The drastic expansion of cities and the rapid economic growth in Korea have caused dramatic increases to demand from groundwater supplies for drinking, domestic, agricultural and industrial water usage. The Ministry of Construction and Transportation and the Korea Water Resources Corporation have constructed and operated the National Groundwater Monitoring Network (NGMN) throughout the country since 1995. The NGMN, an official project establishing a total of 320 groundwater monitoring stations, was completed in 2005. Each national groundwater monitoring station serves as a baseline and primary station to monitor long‐term general trends in water‐level fluctuations and in groundwater quality. The present NGMN and its monitoring capabilities were evaluated to enhance the efficiency of groundwater monitoring and to meet the new societal conditions. Based on reviews and evaluations, some suggestions and recommendations are made with regard to improvements of the national network, including the installation of rainfall gauges in groundwater monitoring stations, gathering groundwater data every hour instead of every 6 h as at present, involving major cations and anions in the regular and periodic chemical analyses, regular periodic analyses of collected groundwater data, and construction of 199 additional groundwater monitoring stations to supplement the existing groundwater monitoring network. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A new measure for assessing the efficiency of hydrological data-driven forecasting models

Abstract

There is a lack of consistency and generality in assessing the performance of hydrological data-driven forecasting models, and this paper presents a new measure for evaluating that performance. Despite the fact that the objectives of hydrological data-driven forecasting models differ from those of the conventional hydrological simulation models, criteria designed to evaluate the latter models have been used until now to assess the performance of the former. Thus, the objectives of this paper are, firstly, to examine the limitations in applying conventional methods for evaluating the data-driven forecasting model performance, and, secondly, to present new performance evaluation methods that can be used to evaluate hydrological data-driven forecasting models with consistency and objectivity. The relative correlation coefficient (RCC) is used to estimate the forecasting efficiency relative to the naïve model (unchanged situation) in data-driven forecasting. A case study with 12 artificial data sets was performed to assess the evaluation measures of Persistence Index (PI), Nash-Sutcliffe coefficient of efficiency (NSC) and RCC. In particular, for six of the data sets with strong persistence and autocorrelation coefficients of 0.966–0.713 at correlation coefficients of 0.977–0.989, the PIs varied markedly from 0.368 to 0.930 and the NSCs were almost constant in the range 0.943–0.972, irrespective of the autocorrelation coefficients and correlation coefficients. However, the RCCs represented an increase of forecasting efficiency from 2.1% to 37.8% according to the persistence. The study results show that RCC is more useful than conventional evaluation methods as the latter do not provide a metric rating of model improvement relative to naïve models in data-driven forecasting.

Editor D. Koutsoyiannis, Associate editor D. Yang

Citation Hwang, S.H., Ham, D.H., and Kim, J.H., 2012. A new measure for assessing the efficiency of hydrological data-driven forecasting models. Hydrological Sciences Journal, 57 (7), 1257–1274.     

Ship measurements of submicron aerosol size distributions over the Yellow Sea and the East China Sea

During the spring of 2005, the total particle concentrations and the submicron aerosol size distributions were measured on board the research vessel over the south sea of Korea and the Korean sector of the Yellow Sea. Similar measurements were made over the East China Sea in autumn 2005. The aerosol properties varied dynamically according to the meteorological conditions, the proximity to the land masses and the air mass back trajectories. The average total particle concentration was the lowest over the East China Sea, 4335 ± 2736 cm^− 3, but the instantaneous minimum, 837 cm^− 3, for the entire ship measurement was recorded during the Yellow Sea cruise. There was also a long (more than 6 h) stretch of low total particle concentrations that fell as low as 1025 cm^− 3 during the East China Sea cruise when the ship was the farthest from the shores and the air mass back trajectories resided long hours over the sea. These observations lead to the suggestion of ~ 1000 cm^− 3 as the background total particle concentration over the marine boundary layer in the studied region of the Yellow Sea and the East China Sea, implying significant anthropogenic influence even for the background value. In the mean time, average aerosol size distributions were unimodal and the mode diameter ranged between 52 and 86 nm, excluding the fog periods, which suggests that the aerosols measured in this study experienced relatively less aging processes within the marine boundary layer.     

Intrinsic random function of order<Emphasis Type="Italic"> k</Emphasis> kriging of electrical resistivity data for estimating the extent of saltwater intrusion in a coastal aquifer system

A saltwater intrusion study using electrical resistivity distribution was conducted in a coastal aquifer system in the southeastern part of Busan, Korea. This aquifer system is divided into four layers according to the hydrogeologic characteristics, and the horizontal extent of intruded saltwater is determined at each layer through the geostatistical interpretation of electrical resistivity data. Intrinsic random function of order k (IRF-k) kriging is performed with covariance models to produce the plane of spatial mean resistivities. The kriged estimates are evaluated by cross validation, and they showed a good agreement with the true values. The statistics of cross validation represented low errors for the estimates. In the resistivity contour maps more than 5 m below the surface, a dominant direction of saltwater intrusion was observed beginning from the east side. These results led the authors to conclude that the application of geostatistical technique to electrical resistivity data is useful for assessing saltwater intrusion in a coastal aquifer system.     

Rapid analysis of risk assessment using developed simulation of chemical industrial accidents software package

The environmental consequences are defined as consequences of accidental release of hazardous substances to the natural environment. This release can lead to many hazards depending on the material stored. The consequences of these hazards to the environment are widespread and have significant importance to human communities living in the surroundings. The mathematical models are extremely useful tools to predict the impacts of chemical process accidents. The objective of this paper is to develop a software package for accident simulation and damage potential estimation. The software is coded in visual basic and is compatible with windows working environments. The software is called Simulation of chemical industrial accident. This application is a comprehensive software package which can be integrated with geographical information system to predict and display the consequence of chemical hazards. The software is a user-friendly and effective tool for evaluating the consequences of major chemical accidents, process decision making for land-use planning, namely locating suitable hazardous installations, hazardous waste disposal areas and emergency response plan.     

Thrust geometries in unconsolidated Quaternary sediments and evolution of the Eupchon Fault, southeast Korea

Abstract The Korean peninsula is widely regarded as being located at the relatively stable eastern margin of the Asian continent. However, more than 10 Quaternary faults have recently been discovered in and reported from the southeastern part of the Korean Peninsula. One of these, the Eupchon Fault, was discovered during the construction of a primary school, and it is located close to a nuclear power plant. To understand the nature and characteristics of the Quaternary Eupchon Fault, we carried out two trench surveys near the discovery site. The fault system includes one main reverse fault (N20°E/40°SE) with approximately 4 m displacement, and a series of branch faults, cutting unconsolidated Quaternary sediments. Structures in the fault system include synthetic and antithetic faults, hanging‐wall anticlines, drag folds, back thrusts, pop‐up structures, flat‐ramp geometries and duplexes, which are very similar to those seen in thrust systems in consolidated rocks. In the upper part of the fault system, several tip damage zones are observed, indicating that the fault system propagates upward and terminates in the upper part of the section. Pebbles along the main fault plane show a preferred orientation of long axes, indicating the fault trace. The unconformity surface between the Quaternary deposits and the underlying Tertiary andesites or Cretaceous sedimentary rocks is displaced by this fault with a reverse movement sense. The stratigraphic relationship shows normal slip sense at the lower part of the section, indicating that the fault had a normal slip movement and was reversely reactivated during the Quaternary. The inferred length of the Quaternary thrust fault, based on the relationship between fault length and displacement, is 200–2000 m. The current maximum horizontal compressive stress direction in this area is generally east‐northeast–west‐southwest, which would be expected to produce oblique slip on the Eupchon Fault, with reverse and right‐lateral strike‐slip components.