Behavior Characteristics of Floating Debris Spilled from the Nakdong River

Abstract

: When the mouth of the Nakdong River, opens its floodgate, thousands of tons of litter should flown into the South Sea, moving towards nearby coast, thus causing serious social and economic damage. For this reason, in the present study, research was performed on one certain area in northeast coast of Geoje island, which is assumed as area damaged due to rainy season and typhoon in 2012, and research for trace of movement route was implemented by using buoy to identify characteristic of movement of floating debris caused from Nakdong River. Flows related to the movement of floating debris was also identified by analyzing ocean meteorological environment. As a result of the study, total 40 tons of litter composed of grasses and trees(or plants litter) were flown into Heungnam beach on 16th, Jul which is the rainy season. Plus, the location tracking buoy, which was dropped when the typhoon SANBA was coming, was passed by southern sea of Gadeok-do and was flown into Geoje beach 1 ~ 2 days after it was dropped. The wind direction was mostly northeasterly wind around the Geoje beach at the time the buoy and floating debris were flown into northeast coast and there was common sea surface currents which was flowing into the coast.

Analysis of floating debris behaviour in the Nakdong River basin of the southern Korean peninsula using satellite location tracking buoys

“…Additionally, because land around rivers and streams is strongly related to vegetation and agriculture considerable inflow of vegetation debris occurs, comprising 70% of the floating debris around Nakdong River (Yu et al, 2002a). Debris that flows into the area near the mouth of the Nakdong River during the rainy season includes a lot of vegetation debris that originates from land (Lee et al, 2007;Jang et al, 2014a;Jang et al, 2014b). If the vegetation debris flows into rivers and streams, it can travel under the surface and mix with artificial debris, including plastic and Styrofoam.…”

Application of Remote Environmental Monitoring Technique to Efficient Management of Beach Litter

“…In addition, it is adjacent to the mouth of the Nakdong River, which is the largest river inflowing to the southern sea, with an estimated 2,000 tons of litter flowing to the coast each year [17]. Approximately 40 tons of floating litter were deposited on Heungnam Beach in July 2012 [18]. …”