I am currently a Research Engineer/Scientist working with Professor Mukesh Kumar in the Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering at the University of Alabama. My research work focuses on improving our understanding and prediction of ecohydrological processes in current-generation land surface models. Specifically, my research aims to enhance the estimation of plant traits, evapotranspiration, and soil moisture to better understand how environmental extremes (such as droughts and heatwaves) shape ecosystem function. To achieve this, I integrate observational data including eddy covariance flux tower and remote sensing datasets with both process-based Earth system models and data-driven machine learning approaches.

Research Interests
  • Land-atmosphere interactions
  • Remote sensing of hydrosphere and biosphere
  • Boundary layer turbulence
  • Land surface modeling
  • Big data and machine learning applications in hydrology
  • Land cover and climate change impacts
Skills
  • Eco-hydrological modeling
  • Physics-guided machine learning
  • Programming in Python, R, FORTRAN, and MATLAB
  • Data analysis and visualization
  • Shell scripting
  • Parallel computing
  • Geographic Information Systems (GIS)
  • Microsoft Office Suite
  • LaTeX for scientific writing
Profile Picture

Pushpendra Raghav

Education

The University of Alabama
Ph.D, Hydrology
Obtaining Improved Estimates of Soil Moisture, Evapotranspiration and its Components using Physical Modeling and Big Data Analysis.

2019-2023
 

Indian Institute of Technology Bombay
M.Tech, Water Resource Engineering
Investigated the overall hydrology of Godavari river basin in response to future climate change using H08 hydrological model. Also developed a statistical tool for revamping extended range forecast of Indian Summer Monsson Rainfall (ISMR).

2016-2018
 

Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam Technical University, Lucknow, India
B.Tech, Civil Engineering
Performed an experiment to obtain Manning's and Chezzy's constants for different materials.

2012-2016

Appointments

Research Engineer, The University of Alabama, USA
Dec. 2024 – Present
Department of Civil, Construction, & Environmental Engineering
Postdoctoral Associate, The University of Alabama, USA
Dec. 2023 – Dec. 2024
Department of Civil, Construction, & Environmental Engineering
Graduate Research Assistant, The University of Alabama, USA
Aug. 2019 – Dec. 2023
Department of Civil, Construction, & Environmental Engineering
Junior Research Fellow, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, India
June 2018 – July 2019
Climate Studies, Department of Civil Engineering
Graduate Teaching Assistant, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay
July 2016 – June 2018
Water Resources, Department of Civil Engineering
Publications

Raghav, P., Kumar, M., Liu, Y. (2023). Machine learning shows significant potential for the improvement of current stomatal conductance models. Manuscript under review at Nature Communications.

Rathore, L. S., Hanasaki, N., Kumar, M., Mekonnen, M., & Raghav, P. (2023). Water scarcity challenges across urban regions with expanding irrigation.” Environmental Research Letters, 16(10), 104007.

Wagle, P., Raghav, P., Kumar, M., & Gunter, S. A. (2023). Influence of water use efficiency parameterizations on flux variance similarity-based partitioning of evapotranspiration. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, 328(13), 109254.

Raghav, P., & Eldho, T. I. (2023). Investigations on the hydrological impacts of climate change on a river basin using macroscale model H08. Journal of Earth System Science, 132(2), 1-23.

Raghav, P., Wagle, P., Kumar, M., Banerjee, T., & Neel, J. (2022). Vegetation Index-Based Partitioning of Evapotranspiration Is Deficient in Grazed Systems. Water Resources Research, 58(8).

Raghav, P., & Kumar, M. (2021). Retrieving gap-free daily root zone soil moisture using Surface Flux Equilibrium theory. Environmental Research Letters, 16(10), 104007.

Raghav, P., Borkotoky, S. S., Joseph, J., Chattopadhyay, R., Sahai, A. K., & Ghosh, S. (2020). Revamping extended range forecast of Indian summer monsoon. Climate Dynamics, 55(11), 3397-3411.

Conferences

Raghav, P., & Kumar, M. (2022, December). Assessing evapotranspiration partitioning obtained using land surface models across varied ecosystems. In AGU Fall Meeting 2022. AGU.

Ghaseminejad, A., Bhat, M., Raghav, P., & Kumar, M. (2022, December). Machine Learning-Driven Temporal Downscaling of Groundwater Recharge Estimates to Obtain Event-Based Response. In AGU Fall Meeting 2022. AGU.

Rathore, L. S., Hanasaki, N., Kumar, M., Mekonnen, M., & Raghav, P. (2022, December). Rain-fed to Irrigation-fed Transition of Cropped Agriculture may Enhance Urban-Rural Water Conflict. In AGU Fall Meeting 2022. AGU.

Wagle, P., Raghav, P., & Kumar, M. (2022, December). Sensitivity of Water Use Efficiency Parameterizations on Flux Variance Similarity-based Partitioning of Evapotranspiration. In AGU Fall Meeting 2022. AGU.

Raghav, P., & Kumar, M. (2021, December). Are canonical relations to partition evapotranspiration valid for managed systems?. In AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts (Vol. 2021, pp. B12B-02).

Kumar, M., & Raghav, P. (2021, December). Obtaining daily root zone soil moisture using a calibration-free approach. In AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts (Vol. 2021, pp. H55C-0777).

Raghav, P., & Eldho, T. I. (2019). Investigations on the impacts of future climate change on the hydrology of a river basin in India using a macroscale hydrological model. In 11th World Congress on Water Resources and Environment: Managing Water Resources for a Sustainable Future-EWRA 2019. Proceedings.

Book Chapter

Raghav, P., & Eldho, T.I. (2021). Assessing the Impacts of Climate Change on Crop Yield in Upper Godavari River Subbasin Using H08 Hydrological Model. Climate Change Impacts on Water Resources: Hydraulics, Water Resources and Coastal Engineering, 193-205.

Datasets

Raghav, P., Wagle, P., Kumar, M., Banerjee, T., & Neel, J. (2022). Data from: Vegetation index-based partitioning of evapotranspiration is deficient in grazed systems. Ag Data Commons.

Raghav, P., Singh, J., & Ghosh, S. (2019). Regional climate projections in India with statistical downscaling. (Contact Prof. Subimal Ghosh at subimal@civil.iitb.ac.in if having any difficulty in downloading the dataset.)

Raghav, P., Kumar, M., & Liu, Y. (2023). Structural constraints in current stomatal conductance models preclude accurate estimation of evapotranspiration and its partitions (1.0.0).

Academic Achievements

Secured an All India Rank of 745 in Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE) exam.

Selected Projects

Improving the skills of dynamical (physics-based) models (ERPAS) for extented range forecast of rainfall (up to four weeks) using assemblage of machine learning techniques (SDM). (2020@ ClimDyna)

C3 crop (Winter Wheat) is in danger under future climate change! How water and temperature stresses under future climate change (RCP4.5) affect the yield of C3 crop (Wheat) and C4 crops (Sorghum and Millet)? (2021@ ClimChange)

Generating continuous (both in time and space) maps of root-zone soil moisture using Surface Flux Equilibrium Theory. (2021@ ERL)

How disturbance in a natural system affects evapotranspiration partitioning? (2022@ WRR)

How parameterization of leaf-level water use efficiency affects the Flux Variance Similarity-based evapotranspiration partitioning? (2022@ AFM)

Future projection of different hydro-climatological variables under high carbon emission scenario in UGRSB. (2023@ JESS)