Email: mkumar4_at_ua_dot_edu
Phone: +1-205-348-0180 Address: 1004D Tom Bevill Bldg. 7th Ave., University of Alabama Tuscaloosa, AL, 35401 |
News:
- New: PhD and post-doc opportunities in Hydrology/Environmental data analytics available for Spring/Fall 2021!! For PhD, apply here, for post-doc apply here. - Sep. 2021: Paper titled "Retrieving gap-free daily root zone soil moisture using surface flux equilibrium theory". published in Environmental Research Letters. Congratulations Pushpendra! - Aug. 2020: Project on "Harnessing Big Hydrological Datasets for Integrated Groundwater Management" funded by NSF. more... |
Mukesh Kumar is an Associate Professor of Hydrology and Water Resources at University of Alabama (UA). He did his B.Tech from IIT Kanpur and Ph.D. from Pennstate University. Before joining UA, Mukesh was a faculty at Duke University.
Mukesh's research aims to improve the assessment of water availability and quality in response to variations and changes in the physical environment, including climate, land use, land cover, topography, etc. To this end, he studies hydrologic processes across the entire continuum, including subsurface, surface, snow, plants, and the atmosphere. His recent research spans across the following three themes:
(a) Mapping hydrologic responses and assessing the controls on them (e.g., HP20, NCC20, HP19, JHM16, EMS16, JHM15, AWR13);
(b) Evaluation of the impacts of variations/changes in landcover (e.g., WRR18, JGR14, JGR13) and climate (e.g., NCC19, CC19, HESS17, PNAS17, WRR16, GRL16, GRL12) on water availability and quality, and vice versa;
(c) Quantification of the role of approximations in data (e.g., HP19, JH19, HP18, AWR13) and processes (e.g., SREP19, JGR16, AWR12) on hydrologic estimates.
To achieve these goals, Mukesh and his research group has co-developed several open-source numerical models (e.g., PIHM, FIHM, GaRM, FoRM, GeoTopSed, SPAC) and data analytics methods (e.g., DEWS, JH09). To facilitate the use of models over a range of scales and settings, he has also worked on the design of model interfaces (e.g., PIHMgis) and efficient modeling strategies (e.g., SREP18, GIS09, pPIHM). Mukesh's research recognitions include Mahatma Gandhi Honor, UA-CCEE's Outstanding Faculty Award, NSF CAREER Award, UCOWR PhD Dissertation Award (2nd Prize), CUAHSI-CMWR Fellowship and Outstanding Student Paper Award at AGU. Mukesh's students have also received several honors including Alabama Graduate Research Scholar's Program Fellowship to Sungyoon Kim, Outstanding Student Paper Award at AGU to Yanlan Liu, CUAHSI Pathfinder Fellowship to Bijan Seyednasrollah, and NASA Earth Science Fellowship, IGERT WiseNet Fellowship, James B Duke Fellowship and DUWC Research Grant to Chris Krapu.
Focus Areas: Integrated Hydrology, Watershed Hydrology, Snow Hydrology, Ecohydrology, Wetlands, Numerical Modeling, Geographic Information Systems (GISs).
Research Sponsors: ALDOT, NASA, NSF, NVIDIA.
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Selected Projects:
Mukesh's research aims to improve the assessment of water availability and quality in response to variations and changes in the physical environment, including climate, land use, land cover, topography, etc. To this end, he studies hydrologic processes across the entire continuum, including subsurface, surface, snow, plants, and the atmosphere. His recent research spans across the following three themes:
(a) Mapping hydrologic responses and assessing the controls on them (e.g., HP20, NCC20, HP19, JHM16, EMS16, JHM15, AWR13);
(b) Evaluation of the impacts of variations/changes in landcover (e.g., WRR18, JGR14, JGR13) and climate (e.g., NCC19, CC19, HESS17, PNAS17, WRR16, GRL16, GRL12) on water availability and quality, and vice versa;
(c) Quantification of the role of approximations in data (e.g., HP19, JH19, HP18, AWR13) and processes (e.g., SREP19, JGR16, AWR12) on hydrologic estimates.
To achieve these goals, Mukesh and his research group has co-developed several open-source numerical models (e.g., PIHM, FIHM, GaRM, FoRM, GeoTopSed, SPAC) and data analytics methods (e.g., DEWS, JH09). To facilitate the use of models over a range of scales and settings, he has also worked on the design of model interfaces (e.g., PIHMgis) and efficient modeling strategies (e.g., SREP18, GIS09, pPIHM). Mukesh's research recognitions include Mahatma Gandhi Honor, UA-CCEE's Outstanding Faculty Award, NSF CAREER Award, UCOWR PhD Dissertation Award (2nd Prize), CUAHSI-CMWR Fellowship and Outstanding Student Paper Award at AGU. Mukesh's students have also received several honors including Alabama Graduate Research Scholar's Program Fellowship to Sungyoon Kim, Outstanding Student Paper Award at AGU to Yanlan Liu, CUAHSI Pathfinder Fellowship to Bijan Seyednasrollah, and NASA Earth Science Fellowship, IGERT WiseNet Fellowship, James B Duke Fellowship and DUWC Research Grant to Chris Krapu.
Focus Areas: Integrated Hydrology, Watershed Hydrology, Snow Hydrology, Ecohydrology, Wetlands, Numerical Modeling, Geographic Information Systems (GISs).
Research Sponsors: ALDOT, NASA, NSF, NVIDIA.
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Selected Projects:
Do existing land surface models appropriately account for the relative role of soil moisture and vapor pressure deficit on evapotranspiration? (@NCC20)
Can we predict forest mortality much before the symptoms (such as foliage discoloration or leaf fall) appear? (@NCC19)
How is annual streamflow peak from snow dominated watersheds affected by climate warming? (@GRL16)
How does antecedent soil moisture and evapotranspiration affect flood response to hurricane storms? (@JHM15)
Is there an optimal tree density that minimizes seasonal net radiation on the forest floor? (@JGR13A ; JGR13B)
Can annual soil evaporation from snow dominated watersheds decrease with increasing annual precipitation? (@AWR13)
How do representations of snow melt and accumulation processes affect distributed hydrologic response? (@AWR13)
How does coupling strategy affect overland and subsurface flow simulations (@WRR14)
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How forest mortality risks will be affected by changes in precipitation, temperature, relative humidity and CO2? (@PNAS17)
Why location of groundwater-fed wetlands can still be predicted using topography-based indices (@HP19)
Can the inter-annual groundwater dynamics of inland wetlands be predicted by only using widely-available precipitation and potential evapotranspiration data? (@WRR16)
Can more extreme precipitation regime negate the impact of climate warming on seasonal snow peak? (@GRL12)
How well can rainfall erosivity and soil moisture explain the daily suspended sediment yield from watersheds? (@EMS16)
How does groundwater and snowpack depth affect the diurnal peak time of streamflow from snow dominated watersheds? (@JHM16)
Is seasonal net radiation in the forest gap larger or smaller than rest of the forest? (@JGR14)
What are the dominant modes of precipitation, temperature and streamflow in Colorado River Basin (@JofH09)
Should the precipitation phase be determined based on thresholds of air temperature, dew point temperature, or wet-bulb temperature? (@AWR13)
Can nested discretization reduce the time needed for hydrologic model calibration and simulation, while ensuring similar accuracy? (@SREP18)
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