BACKGROUND:Monitoring of the dynamic changes of chemical properties in agricultural land is very important for agricultural sustainability. Chemical properties of agricultural soils in Korea have been investigated at four-year interval in the order of paddy, plastic film house, upland, and orchard soils since 1999. METHODS AND RESULTS: Total 8,160 topsoil samples were taken from the upland in

Abstract:The construction and service of urban infrastructure systems and buildings involves immense resource consumption. Cities are responsible for the largest component of global energy, water, and food consumption as well as related sewage and organic waste production. Due to ongoing global urbanization, in which the largest sector of the global population lives in cities which are already built, global level strategies need to be developed that facilitate both the sustainable construction of new cities and the re-development of existing urban environments. A very promising approach in this regard is the decentralization and building integration of environmentally sound infrastructure systems for integrated resource management. This paper discusses such new and innovative building services engineering systems, which could contribute to increased energy efficiency, resource productivity, and urban resilience. Applied research and development projects in Germany, which are based on integrated system approaches for the integrated and environmentally sound management of energy, water and organic waste, are used as examples. The findings are especially promising and can be used to stimulate further research and development, including economical aspects which are crucial for sustainable urban (re-)development.

Recently, the field of construction is putting a variety of effort into reducing CO2, since global warming is being accelerated due to climate changes and the increase of greenhouse gas. For reduction of CO2 in the field of construction, it is required to make plans to cut down heating energy of buildings and especially, it is urgently needed to cut down energy of residential buildings in rural area where occupies the majority of consumption of petroleum-based energy sources. Therefore, this research compared and analyzed the actual energy consumption, by evaluating energy performance of a detached house applying passive house design components for reduction of energy. As the result, energy consumption showed remarkable differences, according to the operation of a heat recovery ventilation unit which is one of passive house design components, and building energy consumption displayed remarkable differences, too, depending on the difference of airtightness performance during building energy simulation conducted in process of design. Based on these results, the importance of airtightness performance of passive house was verified. The result of the actual measurement of energy consumption demonstrated that LNG was most economical amongst several heat resources yielded, on the basis of LPG source energy consumption measured within a certain period of time, and it was followed by kerosene. LPG was analyzed to have a low economic efficiency, when used for heating.

This study developed a flowerbed type infiltration system that could control the amount of runoff discharge under a certain level estimated its proper design infiltration rate, and analyzed the effects of its implementation. Analyzing the performance of infiltration system is the one of the essential processes that should be under review to predict its effects after implementation when a rainwater infiltration system is included in a district-based plan.To estimate the unit design infiltration rate of this system, the runoff decrease effect was analyzed by varying the unit infiltration rate of the system applied to the parking lot adjacent to the Korea Institute of Construction Technology laboratory building by using a water balance analysis program. After varying the unit design infiltration to 0.1～3m .hr). It was also found that the unit design infiltration rate obtained from a field infiltration test of the developed system was about 0.045m 3 /hr. Based on this study, it was possible that infiltration rate is estimated to consider the economic scale and environmental effect. It is significant to apply the spatial plan of rainwater infiltration system as green infrastructure.

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