Page 26 - Ranger Demo

Monitoring Water Resources in Transboundary River Using Remote Sensing
Donghwan Kim and Hyongki Lee
Donghwan Kim is a military student at the Joint Forces Military University, Republic of Korea. Hyongki Lee is Associate Professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering, Cullen College of Engineering, Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, University of Houston, USA.
Introduction
The monitoring of river basin development and water variability is critical to understanding tensions associated with transboundary rivers in North and South Korea. River basin development, such as dams and water infrastructure in transboundary rivers, can be a potential source of tension between upstream and downstream countries since dams constructed upstream can adversely affect downstream riparian zones. However, because most of the information related to North Korea has been restricted, the information about dam construction and their locations were inaccurate in many previous studies. Water resources in transboundary rivers can be exploited for political purposes with severe consequences. For instance, due to the unexpected water release from the Hwanggang Dam, upstream of the transboundary Imjin River that flows between North and South Korea, six South Koreans died on 6 September 2009. The Imjin River can be exploited as a political tool by North Korea, and seven events were reported as water conflicts in the Imjin River from 2001 to 2016. The locations of the Imjin River and the border between North and South Korea are shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1 Comparison of the locations of the dams constructed in the Imjin River in published papers
In Figure 1, the circled numbers and triangles indicate the First, Second, Third, and Fourth April 5th Dams and their locations, respectively. Locations of the First, Second, and Third April 5th Dams have been identified differently: the yellow, grey, and green triangles represent their locations identified in Kim et al. (2011), Yang et al. (2017), and this study, respectively. The green, square and purple triangle
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