HYDROKOREA - AN INTEGRATED PROJECT TO STUDY ECOHYDROLOGY BASED ON KOFLUX SUPERSITES

An interdisciplinary study on hydrologic processes has been initiated in Korea to answer the most important and yet the most difficult questions: i) Can we close the water budget in catchments with different landscapes? ii) Can we upscale the hydrologic data and processes from watershed to regional basin? iii) Can we nowcast the time-and-space dependent water budget?

Since 2002, the KoFlux network (http://www.koflux.org) has been operating with 7 flux-monitoring sites in Korea, China and Thailand. HydroKorea is built on the existing two KoFlux supersites (i.e., Kwangnung and Haenam), where evapotranspiration has been monitored using the micrometeorological eddy covariance towers. Stable isotopes (δ2H, δ18O) are analyzed to trace and partition the water cycle components. In order to quantitatively estimate base-flow and groundwater recharge, measurements of precipitation events are combined with those of soil moisture change, water-level, electrical conductivity, and temperature fluctuations at monitoring wells, and stream discharge. In particular, the climatology of flux footprint is combined with the analysis of high resolution satellite images (e.g., IKONOS, MODIS) to accurately validate and calibrate the ecohydrological and biophysical models (e.g., BIOME-BGC, RHYSIS, SiB2.5). These models are then combined with mesoscale models (e.g., MM5, WRF) for various testing associated with scaling issues.

Ultimately, the integrated system of measurement, modeling and analysis will provide the nowcasting of the water budget and its changes in time-and-space for sustainable use of water resources for the whole Korean Peninsula. HydroKorea will develop the core technology to provide invaluable data with consistency to the nation-level decision makers for the scientific and eco-friendly water-resource managements.