Kang*, Sinkyu, Seongjin Oh, Gayoung Yoo, and Dowon Lee
Department of Environmental Planning
Graduate School of Environmental Studies
Seoul National University
Seoul 151-742, Korea
Phone number : +82-2-880-5650
Fax number : +82-2-873-5109
E-mail : kangsk@plaza1.snu.ac.kr
Soil temperature has been considered as major variables controlling important ecosystem processes such as plant growth and distribution and decomposition of leaf litter. In spite of its importance, data of soil temperature are very frequently unavailable in most of Korean forest ecosystems although air temperature and precipitation data have been
extensively collected.
When soil temperature of a remote area far from weather-monitoring stations is concerned, two steps of estimation processes should be considered. The first one is to estimate site-specific air temperature and precipitation from data collected at those of the weather stations. The second step is to model soil temperature using estimated microclimate variables.
In this study, we developed a systematic method to estimate soil temperature of a remote forest watershed from meteorological variables monitored at adjacent weather stations. We used both geostatistical and time series models to predict microclimate variables and soil temperature. Estimated soil temperature fairly well fitted in with field data monitored in Mt. Jumbong, Gangwan Province, South Korea in 1997.