EAPSI Korea

So far I’ve gotten to eat some great food, experience some cool places, and meet new friends.

If you know me, you know that I love to eat food. Korean style food is much different than I expected. I envisioned a bunch of dishes covered in many different sauces, similar to what you get when you go to a Chinese restaurant. However, there really is only one type of sauce that they like to use for their food, and that is spicy sauce. They usually use the sauce to dip their food in or cover their noodles. One thing that did not surprise me was how popular kimchi is. Kimchi is the staple food of Korea. It’s basically just fermented cabbage with spicy sauce. Expect this, along with pickled radishes, and a couple of other different foods as side dishes at any Korean restaurant. The nice thing about Korean restaurants is that you can get unlimited amounts of these little side dishes. And usually a normal plate of food will cost you around $5, and you don’t tip so the service is pretty relaxed, but I think it’s better that way. My favorite Korean meal would have to be Korean BBQ. It’s different than American BBQ. Normally you sit down at a table with a grill in front of you and you cook your own pork or beef. Koreans like their food hot and right off the grill. Once the meat is done you place 1 piece on a leaf of lettuce and then add some toppings like onions, garlic, kimchi, sauce, and then you wrap the whole thing up and shove it in your mouth in one bite. And with every meal Soju (like Korean vodka) and Mekju (beer) are served. I like to pour the Soju and Mekju together to make a ‘Somek’. After the meal they serve noodles in an icy broth. It’s really good! Korea is also famous for their street food so after a night out it’s nice to stop by a vendor and get some street food.

I’ve done a lot of sight-seeing since I’ve been in Korea. I’ve experienced nightlife in Gangnam, Itaewon, and Hongdae districts. Noraebang is Korean Karaoke that can get very intense and loud, but still a lot of fun. I took the bullet train to the southeastern part of Korea to visit very traditional Korean burial grounds and Buddhist temples. I also went to a Korean baseball game. It is much different than American baseball in terms of the fans. They have cheers, noise makers, and go absolutely nuts every time their team scores. But one of my favorite trips was to Jeju Island, South Korea. They call it the Hawaii of Korea. It’s a very big volcanic island to the south of the peninsula. We experienced underground caves that were carved out by lava flows, very nice beaches, incredible hiking, waterfalls, and Jeju’s famous black pork. This weekend I plan on going to Busan, the second largest city in Korea. It is a beach city on the southeastern coast. Luckily I’ve made some lifelong friends on the way that are willing to go on crazy adventures with me. I’m lucky to have such fun people in my life, and I look forward to continuing relationships with them when I go back to the states.

Hey everyone! Just wanted to update you with some cool plots that I found to be pretty telling about the model I’ve been working with. So long story short, turns out BESS does a pretty good job at estimating how much water is leaving the surface, via evapotranspiration (ET), over the Southern Great Plains. Knowing this has allowed me to explore more into the results of the model because we can be confident that it does a good job at depicting what is going on, to an extent. I have attached a couple of plots that help portray how useful this model is for understanding the water budget over the south. The first figure, which shows Kansas, Oklahoma, and North Texas (kinda hard to tell but you can clearly see major cities like Dallas and OKC that have no ET), is how much water (in mm) left the surface via ET in 2007. That year was a very wet year over the south so it is expected to have higher ET rates. That is exactly what is seen in the first figure. In comparison, the second figure is from a serious drought year (2011) where ET rates were very low. This model shows a difference of hundreds (!!) of mm of water leaving the surface in some areas. That just goes to show how dry it was, therefore little water was available to leave the surface in 2011. This is just one of many results I have been collecting. If you are interested in knowing more about my results then don’t hesitate to contact me. All in all, I’m excited to continue this work and see what kind of great science can be learned from this experience. My next post will be more about my adventures around Korea so stay tuned!

Last week I got the opportunity to visit my host lab’s research site. The journey took about an hour and forty five minutes to get to by car. It was fairly close to North Korea, actually. My mom wasn’t too thrilled to hear that. The drive back took over three hours! That was all thanks to rush hour traffic in Seoul.

Similar to my sites back in Oklahoma, their site has a very large flux tower and several other hyperspectral sensors. However, this site is different than mine because it is rice and not winter wheat or grassland. Their tower is about four times larger than ours. You can see in the picture that Hyungsuk has to harness himself to the tower while he is working on it in case he falls.

So, why collect all this data? Well the model that my professor has developed uses satellite data and reanalysis meteorological data to estimate CO2 and H20 fluxes between the land and atmosphere. Key word is “estimate”. Since it is impossible/costly to measure these fluxes directly (with flux towers), the model can come in handy because it can estimate these fluxes on a 1 km grid. There are errors in these estimates, hence the word, so we need to know how much error is coming from the data that is being input into the model versus the error in the equations the model uses. The most likely answer is both. But we want to try and eliminate as much error and uncertainty as possible. Therefore, we use the data collected at our site to input into the model (instead of the reanalysis and satellite data). If the model then produces ~the same fluxes as what we measure with the towers then we know the equations in the model are doing their job and we have to start pointing the finger towards the input data. But if the model produces different fluxes then the equations are the culprit.

Hopefully we can find out how well this model can determine these fluxes over the Southern Great Plains of the U.S. by the end of my time here. Then this can help determine whether this model can be used for applications, such as drought prediction, crop yield/health, water resources management, and a multitude of other realms.

 

 

Meet (the majority) of my lab members! My professor, Dr. Youngryel Ryu, is to my right. Yan and Chongya are the Post-docs that will also be assisting me (2 in the top left). Jongmin (my left), Hyungsuk (bottom left photo), Bu Young (across from me), and So Youn (top right). We had a traditional Korean BBQ dish called Samgyeopsal (three layered pork belly) that tasted a lot like really thick bacon. It was incredible! So far I’ve loved all of the food I have encountered here in Korea. If you are wondering what the peace sign is that a lot of Asians like to throw up in pictures, it means victory. They’re not even sure why they do it or where it came from. It has just found its way into their culture. Can’t wait to show you all what I had for dinner last night! It was quite the experience.

Sorry for the late start to this blog. It’s been a pretty crazy couple of weeks getting settled here in Seoul.

First off, I want to start off by telling everyone what exactly I’m doing here in Seoul. I submitted a proposal to the National Science Foundation and it got accepted. Now I’m here at Seoul National University working with Dr. Youngryel Ryu and his lab for 8 weeks. Him and his lab have developed a model that estimates evapotranspiration and carbon dioxide exchange between the land and atmosphere. This is important for my masters research because I collect that type of data with the instruments I’ve been working with the last couple of years. Now I have the opportunity to use what I’ve collected and combine it with a model to see how well this model estimates these phenomena over the Southern Great Plains.

In terms of Korean culture, I’ve noticed a lot of similarities and differences between American and Korea. For instance, Koreans love American music. Whenever I go to the gym, get a haircut, or even to the mall, there is usually uncensored rap/hip-hop music. And when I say uncensored I’m talking about very explicit music that you would never hear in public in America. Koreans are also obsessed with the Simpsons, Mickey Mouse, and American baseball. I also think it’s interesting how people tend to hold hands a lot more frequently here. And not just between couples, but friends will hold hands, usually same sex friends. The food has been really great. I think my favorite dishes so far have been kimchi pancakes, this donut like thing called a hotak, and these rice balls that I have no idea what is in them.

I’ve gotten to experience some really cool palaces, food, night life, and people. There aren’t as many foreigners in a city of 12 million as one would think. But English is written on everything so it’s not hard to get around. I’ll try to update this thing as frequently as possible. And I’ll put photos on here soon. But for now, I’m going to leave you all with this.

Geonbae (Cheers),
Hayden

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