Abstract
North Korea has suffered flood damage every year since 1995. It is assumed that this damage is linked to deforestation. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of deforestation on the occurrence of floods in North Korea using spatial statistical techniques. The research was conducted at Hoeryeong City, which experienced disastrous flooding in 2016. A land-use change map was produced using two Landsat data sets from 1977 and 2016. The flood-damaged areas map, landform map, and the distance from the nearest stream map were also used in the spatial statistical analysis. In the deforestation zone, area of soil loss over 200 tons/yr increased by 14 km2 (16.6%), while that under 50 tons/yr decreased by 25 km2 (29.3%). In addition, the land-use change, runoff coefficient, and peak time runoff increased from 0.31 to 0.46, 56.3 mm/hr to 60.8 mm/hr, and 128.2 m3/sec to 206.6 m3/sec, respectively. Also, spatial statistical analysis results showed that land-use change was concluded to strongly affect the occurrence of floods. In conclusion, deforestation at Hoeryeong City contributed to severe flooding due to changes in land-use policy. The results of this study will help decision makers to establish the North Korean forest restoration policy and countermeasures against flood damage.
Highlights
North Korea has suffered flood damage every year since 1995, with serious damage occurring in1995, 2007, 2012, and 2016 [1,2]
14 km2 (16.6%), while that under 50 tons/yr decreased by 25 km2 (29.3%)
Loss of less than 50 tons occurred in 608 km2 (45.1%), 50 to 100 tons in 356 km2 (26.4%), 100 to 150 tons in 198 km2 (14.7%), 150 to 200 tons in 97 km2 (7.2%), and over 200 tons in 88 km2 (6.6%) in 1977
Summary
North Korea has suffered flood damage every year since 1995, with serious damage occurring in1995, 2007, 2012, and 2016 [1,2]. Some 68,900 people lost their homes, 11,600 houses were destroyed, and 29,800 other houses suffered massive damage [3]. This damage has been attributed to deforestation in North Korea [1,2,4,5,6]. Forests have been changed to newly developed croplands along the gentle hillslope for national economic difficult after 1980 in North Korea [1,2,4,5,7,8,9]. The developed croplands are named Darakbat (terraced crop field with embankment) and Bitalbat (titled crop field developed on the original hillslope) [9]
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