Navigating the Nexus: Hydrology, Agriculture, Pollution and Climate Change

Author Biography

Dr. Aliva Nanda is currently working as an Assistant Professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Mandi, India. She had three years of research experience at Sierra Nevada Research Institute, University of California, Merced, USA. Her research expertise includes understanding runoff generation mechanisms, pathways, and thresholds at micro- to macro-scale and eco-hydrological processes of the forested mountainous catchments. She also works in the research domain of disturbance hydrology and eco-hydrological processes. Dr. Nanda has a Ph.D. in Hydrology from the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, India. During her Ph.D., she has done extensive field studies to understand the hydrological processes of the Himalayan landscapes. Her master’s and bachelor’s degrees are in Irrigation and Drainage Engineering and Agricultural Engineering, respectively. She also received the University Gold Medal and Governor’s Award for her outstanding academic performance during her undergraduate and postgraduation studies. Besides these, Dr. Nanda bagged many accolades and travel fellowships, i.e., Lloyd V. Berkner Travel Fellowship, American Geophysical Union (AGU) student travel grant, Japan Geophysics Union (JpGU) student travel grant, AGU early-career travel grant, and many other academic awards till date. She has an amazing publication record with papers in highly reputed high-impact international journals and international conferences.   Dr. Pankaj K. Gupta is a Ramanujan fellow, upholding one of the honored scientific positions ​at the Indian Institute of Technology (I.I.T.) Delhi, India. As a Ramanujan fellow, he has undertaken an exceptional project “Engineered Microbiome (E-Microbiome)”, a unique combination of microbiology, hydrogeology, and chemical sciences for restoration of polluted sites, funded by the Anusandhan National Research Foundation (ANRF), Govt. of India. He is also an adjunct assistant professor at the University of Waterloo, Canada. After having completed his Ph.D. from IIT Roorkee, he has been a Postdoctoral fellow at the University of Waterloo, Canada. He is the co-founder of the Society of Young Agriculture and Hydrology Scholars of India (SYAHI) and is also an editorial member of Frontiers in Water Journal, Biochar, and Carbon research. etc. He has also edited several books entitled “Decontamination of Subsurface Water Resources System using Contemporary Technologies (Elsevier)”, “Agri-Tech Approaches for Nutrients and Irrigation Water Management (CRC Press)”, “Integrated Waste Management Trends, Policies, and Perspectives (CRC Press)”, “Soil-Water, Agriculture, and Climate Change: Exploring Linkages (Springer)”, “Advances in remediation techniques for polluted soils and groundwater (Elsevier)”, “Fate and transport of subsurface pollutants” (Springer). Dr. Gupta holds his in-depth experience of incorporating novel technologies to map soil-water systems of 30+ sites in India. Dr. Gupta is passionate about interdisciplinary research and teaching to understand multi-scale interactions between different components of the subsurface environment, especially the soil- groundwater-pollutant-microbes system. Dr. Vivek Gupta is an Assistant Professor at the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Mandi in Himachal Pradesh, India. Before joining IIT Mandi, he was a Postdoctoral Scholar at the University of California Merced in the USA and a researcher at the International Water Management Institute in New Delhi, India. Dr. Gupta holds a Ph.D. in Hydrology from IIT Roorkee and an M.Tech. in Civil Engineering with a specialization in Water Resources Engineering and Management from IIT Guwahati. He has published over 30 research articles, including 16 international peer-reviewed journal articles in highly respected journals, three book chapters and one edited book. His research interests include climate change impact assessment, droughts, climate extremes, development of early warning and climate information systems, hydrological modeling, and flood and drought prediction using numerical and data-based modeling. Dr. Prakash Kumar Jha is an Assistant Professor of Agriculture Climatology at Mississippi State University. He works in the field of crop modeling, geospatial science, agricultural Physics, climate and environmental sciences. He has PhD in Crop and Soil sciences from Michigan State University, USA. He serves as secretary of Global Indian Scientist and Technocrat Forum USA. He is founding member of Society of Agricultural and Hydrology Scholars of India. He is chair of global agronomy community and early career community of American society of Agronomy and Crop Science Society of America. Dr. Swatantra Kumar Dubey holds an M.Sc. (Tech) in Environmental Science and Technology from Banaras Hindu University, India, and a Ph.D. in Environmental Science from the Central University of Rajasthan, India. He has held research and academic positions at several leading institutions, including NEERI, IARI (New Delhi), Sikkim University, and IISER Bhopal. He is a Senior Specialist at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in Varanasi, India, and worked as a Research Professor in the Department of Environmental Engineering at Seoul National University of Science and Technology, Seoul. Dr. Dubey has published 20 research papers in reputed national and international journals and contributed four chapters to academic books. He is also a lifetime member of the Indian Meteorological Society. He has developed expertise in a wide range of environmental modeling and geospatial software, including ArcGIS, SWAT, HEC-HMS, AquaCrop, CROPWAT, ET Calculator, ERDAS Imagine, LARS-WG5, Climate Data Operator (CDO), and NetCDF. His research interests focus on water quality, water resources management, hydrological modeling, crop modeling, crop water requirements, and climate change adaptation.