Binayak Mohanty

About

Binayak P. Mohanty is a Regents Professor and COALS Chair in Hydrologic Engineering and Sciences at Texas A&M University. He is affiliated with the Biological and Agricultural Engineering department as well as the Ecosystem Science and Management program, focusing on Water Management and Hydrologic Science. His work is connected to the Vadose Zone Research Group, which is part of the Texas A&M College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and Texas A&M AgriLife Research. The group conducts research on water stores and fluxes, critical for understanding and modeling water resources and their sustainability, particularly in Texas and the Southern USA. The Texas Water Observatory, a distributed network of field observatories in the Brazos River corridor, is one of the advanced observational platforms associated with this research, monitoring groundwater, soil water, surface water, and atmospheric water at multiple locations across space and time using near-real-time sensors.

Research topics

• Artificial Intelligence
• Machine Learning
• Computer Science
• Mathematics
• Soil science
• Geography
• Meteorology
• Environmental science
• Geology
• Geotechnical engineering

Selected publications

• Differentiable modelling to unify machine learning and physical models for geosciences

  Nature Reviews Earth & Environment · 2023 · 378 citations

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Global Flash Drought Monitoring Using Surface Soil Moisture

  Water Resources Research · 2021 · 79 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  Abstract Abrupt onset and swift intensification characterize flash droughts. Global surface soil moisture ( θ RS ) from NASA's Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) satellite can facilitate a near‐real‐time assessment of emerging flash droughts at a 36‐km footprint. However, a robust flash drought monitoring using θ RS must account for the (a) short observation record of SMAP, (b) nonlinear geophysical controls over θ RS dynamics, and (c) emergent meteorological drivers of flash droughts. We propo…

  DOI

• Rootzone Soil Moisture Dynamics Using Terrestrial Water‐Energy Coupling

  Geophysical Research Letters · 2024-09-28 · 15 citations

  articleOpen accessCorresponding

  Abstract A lack of high‐density rootzone soil moisture ( θ RZ ) observations limits the estimation of continental‐scale, space‐time contiguous θ RZ dynamics. We derive a proxy of daily θ RZ dynamics — active rootzone degree of saturation ( S RZ ) — by recursive low‐pass (LP) filtering of surface soil moisture ( θ S ) within a terrestrial water‐energy coupling (WEC) framework. We estimate the LP filter parameters and WEC thresholds for the piecewise‐linear coupling between S RZ and evaporative fr…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Characterizing large‐scale preferential flow across Continental United States

  Vadose Zone Journal · 2024-02-24 · 7 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  Abstract Understanding preferential flow (PF) at large scales is critical for improving land management and groundwater (GW) quality. However, limited knowledge of this process, due to soil surface heterogeneity and observational constraints, hampers progress. In this study, we propose estimating effective PF at remote sensing footprint scale (4–9 km) by examining its impact on soil moisture (SM) distribution and shallow groundwater (SGW) table fluctuations (depth 5 m). Effective PF encompasses…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Preferential Hydrologic States and Tipping Characteristics of Global Surface Soil Moisture

  Water Resources Research · 2024-03-28 · 6 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  Abstract A dynamic transition in soil hydrologic states through meteorological variability and terrestrial feedback governs soil‐vegetation‐climate (SVC) interactions, constrained by critical soil moisture (SM) thresholds. However, observational and scaling constraints limit critical SM threshold estimation at the remote‐sensing (RS) footprint scale. Using global surface SM ( θ RS ) from NASA’s Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) satellite, we characterize the seasonal preferential hydrologic st…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• Measurement and Modeling of Flow and Transport in Macroporous Soils

  NSF · $295k · 2001–2006

• Flow-Induced Redox Geochemistry Within Fractured/Macroporous and Layered Vadose Zone

  NSF · $477k · 2007–2013

• CMG: Multi-Scale Data Assimilation of Soil Moisture Under Heterogeneous Soil Hydraulics

  NSF · $341k · 2006–2010

Frequent coauthors

• Narendra N. Das

  Michigan State University

  67 shared

• Rabindra Kumar Panda

  57 shared

• Gurjeet Singh

  54 shared

• Dara Entekhabi

  Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  52 shared

• Bimal K. Bhattacharya

  49 shared

• Nandita Gaur

  University of Georgia

  38 shared

• Vinit Sehgal

  32 shared

• Amor V.M. Ines

  19 shared

Labs

• Vadose Zone Research GroupPI

Education

• B.S., Agricultural Engineering and Technology

  Orissa University of Agriculture & Technology – India

  1985

• Other, Agricultural Engineering

  Asian Institute of Technology – Thailand

  1987

• Ph.D.

  Iowa State University

Similar researchers at Texas A&M University

• Vijay Singhh-101
• Rosana Moreirah-42
• Eunsung Kanh-40