Mohanty elected Fellow for American Association for Advancement of Science

Writer: Blair Fannin, 979-845-2259, b-fannin@tamu.edu

Contact: Dr. Binayak Mohanty, 979-458-4421, bmohanty@tamu.edu

COLLEGE STATION – Dr. Binayak Mohanty, Regents Professor in the department of biological and agricultural engineering at Texas A&M University, has been elected to the rank of Fellow by the Council of the American Association for the Advancement of Science “for preeminent efforts in the application of remote sensing platforms for understanding multi-scale hydrology and developing scaling rules for soil moisture and hydrologic fluxes.”

According to the organization, AAAS is the premier scientific society that seeks to advance science, engineering, and innovation throughout the world for the benefit of all people and official publisher of the Science journal.

Mohanty is chair of Hydrologic Engineering and Sciences in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Texas A&M. His research includes water, heat and chemical transport measurement, modeling and scaling in variably-saturated porous media ranging from core-scale to regional-scale. Additional research has included studies on soil moisture satellite remote sensing; measurement and modeling of land surface hydraulic properties; preferential water flow and chemical transport through macroporous media; and coupled hydrologic and biogeochemical processes in soil.

Mohanty is an international leader in using satellite remote sensing to study soil moisture, soil hydraulics and evapotranspiration at different scales. His signature work has been in implementation of satellite platforms for earth surface hydrologic parameter exploration at multiple scales and discovery of soil moisture scaling rules, including dominant geophysical controls under different hydrologic and climatic conditions.

These contributions have provided tools and techniques to address a wide spectrum of challenges related to soil and environmental sciences, including water management, crop production, climate forecasts, drought/flood prediction, groundwater recharge estimation and pollution control.

Mohanty is the lead researcher of the newly established Texas Water Observatory in the Brazos River corridor at Texas A&M University (http://two.tamu.edu), which will serve as a regional testbed for terrestrial and coastal hydrologic, ecologic, geomorphic, climatic, and biogeochemical process studies among others in the coming decade.

Mohanty received his bachelor’s degree from Orissa University of Agriculture and Technology, India, his master’s degree from Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand, and his doctoral degree from Iowa State University. He is a fellow of Soil Science Society of America, Agronomy Society of America and Texas A&M AgriLife, as well as a senior fellow of Texas A&M Engineering and distinguished alumni of Asian Institute of Technology.

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