Abstract
This study provides a comprehensive review of the existing river
measurement data of South Korea. The specific sediment yield in the
country is 5–1,500 tons/km 2·year. The watershed area
decisively affects the shapes of the curves for flow duration, sediment
rating, and cumulative distribution of water and sediment discharge, and
it can determine the effects of topographic and anthropogenic
characteristics on erosion and sedimentation processes. Regarding flow
regime, small watersheds have flashy hydrographs and high sediment
concentrations at a given flow discharge. The coefficient of the
sediment rating curves for various rivers decreases from 1 to 0.02 as
the watershed area increases from 100 to 20,000 km 2,
with the exponent of the curves ranging from 1.5 to 2.0. Moreover,
sediment transport in small watersheds depends on large floods. The
half-yield discharge typically ranges from 5 to 40 times the mean
discharge, and it decreases with increasing watershed area. This study
proposes equations to calculate the annual discharges, flow duration
curves, sediment yield, and cumulative distribution curves of the flow
and sediment, as well as the sediment yield at reservoirs in South
Korea. Additionally, the sediment regimes in the country are compared to
those in other continental regions.