Research Background and Synergies
My research deals with the understanding and
representation of the effects of vegetation – land surface processes
in environmental processes at different scales. I am one of the
three invited, non-federal representatives to the community modeling
effort of the Weather Research and Forecast (WRF) model working
group on Land Surface Models, and to the Federal Geophysical Data
Commission (FGDC) Spatial ClimateWorking Group.
The research activities are based on the synthesis
of field observations and modeling analysis, for process studies,
hypothesis – driven experimentation, and applications of the model
results for interdisciplinary climate change problems. The research
improves the understanding of the effect of environmental changes on
the plant and landsurface response and the representation of the
land surface processes in models for understanding the nonlinear
feedback between plant and landsurface changes on regional scale
environmental processes. Past and ongoing research is largely
federally funded through a variety of competitive research grants
through NSF, NASA, NOAA, and USDA NRI CGP. I have authored or
co-authored 25 successful proposals for external grants totaling
over $3M. I vertically integrate undergraduate, graduate and
postdoctoral researchers in my research and am very
interdisciplinary in developing collaborative projects.
A list of peer reviewed publications resulting from
my research is available in the publications section. Five papers I
have co-authored have received good recognition in the popular press
following a NASA Earth System Science press release, Associated
Press releases, and three more published papers have been
highlighted by the American Geophysical Union in its proceedings Eos
as feature articles. All the papers can be found at
My overall research activities are targeted towards:
(a) developing and evaluating process scale models for better
representation of leaf and canopy scale processes; (b) testing and
applying these models for regional studies; and (c) using
statistical-dynamical approaches for assessing the coupling between
the various land surface components for weather, air quality, and
climate studies.
My current research projects are in following areas:
Land Surface Process Modeling, Satellite Data Assimilation,
Terrestrial Ecosystem and Atmosphere, Land Atmosphere Interactions,
Agricultural Air Quality, Carbon and Hydrological Cycle, Biospheric
Processes in Weather and Regional Climate Models, Integrating
Isotopic and Dynamical Models, and Synthesis of
Multiscale/Multisensor Remote and Land based Observational Systems.
The specific objectives of this research are based
on the systematic investigation of five questions from leaf/ canopy,
to landscape, to regional and continental scales:
1) What do field observations from insitu and remote
sensed datasets reveal about the effect of environmental changes
such as radiation, temperature, humidity, and soil moisture on plant
response such as evapotranspiration, photosynthesis, and
productivity?
2) What is the ability of the different modeling
systems and leaf and canopy scale models for simulating the observed
environmental response on the plant scale, and what improvements are
needed to represent the processes more accurately?
3) What is the impact of incorporating improvements
in the terrestrial biosphere processes and enhanced landuse/land
cover scaling within land surface models on the dynamical
predictions of the environmental and weather/climate processes such
as convection, precipitation, and surface moisture at regional
scales?
4) What is the effect of landuse/land cover changes
(such as urbanization) on the regional water cycle components such
as precipitation and evaporation/transpiration?
5) What is the relative role and impact of local to
regional scale land surface representation versus large-scale
changes due to greenhouse gases and sea surface temperature changes
and atmospheric radiative changes on the regional and global climate
variability?
The research improves the understanding of the
environmental changes on terrestrial biosphere and the
representation of the biosphere – atmosphere interactions in
regional scale models of environmental, weather and climate systems.
The research seeks to understand the processes affecting land
surface processes at regional scales and has an applied component
which seeks to improve the accuracy of these models by representing
correct feedbacks between land and the atmosphere and by
incorporating in-situ and remote sensing information coupled with a
hierarchy of modeling systems.
A highlighted feature of my work is to assess the
impact of land surface heterogeneity on severe weather systems and
the Indian Monsoon region. I look forward to synergizing the
interactions by using collaborations to advance scientific
discoveries, and improvements in modeling systems. This will be
interwoven along the theme of improving land surface processes and
their representation in micro, meso and regional scale models and
further contribute to enhance the reputation of the department and
the university.
