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Introduction
After receiving M.Sc in Geology, M.Tech in Remote Sensing and Ph.D from CUSAT, worked at CUSAT and Sultan Qaboos University, Sultanate of Oman as guest faculty and consultant. Worked with Martin Middle East, Geotechnical Engineering and Marine Surveys Int. N.V (GEMS) and Geotechnical Survey Solutions (U.A.E). He also worked at CWRDM, GoK as Principal Scientist at Geomatics Division. Currently working as a Professor & Head, Department of Remote Sensing and GIS at KUFOS, Kochi. India
Current institution
Additional affiliations
November 2017 - May 2019
May 2019 - present
Education
August 1998 - December 2003
Publications
Publications (197)
Maldives has been impacted by a mass dieback of mangroves in its northern islands during March 2020 and March 2021. This dieback particularly affected the Bruguiera cylindrica, which holds historical and cultural significance to the local community. There are significant concerns regarding the consequences of such an incident, considering the vital...
26 On the morning of July 30, 2024, a catastrophic landslide struck Wayanad, India, in the 27 ecologically sensitive Western Ghats, claiming over 200 lives, with many still missing 28 beneath the debris. Here, we present a comprehensive overview of the landslide event 29 based on field, satellite images analysis, numerical modeling, geotechnical te...
Landslides pose a significant threat in the Kannan Devan Hill (KDH) region of the Western Ghats (WG) in Peninsular India, particularly during the monsoon season. This study seeks to explore the various factors contributing to landslides, beyond the primary trigger of heavy rainfall. In alignment with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals...
Most of the sections of the Western Ghats (in Kerala) are highly susceptible to landslides, particularly during extreme rainfall events (EREs). The massive landslide that occurred in the Mundakkai-Chooralmala region of Wayanad district on 30 July 2024 is the latest in a series of devastating landslides in this region. This event caused extensive da...
This study aimed to estimate the chlorophyll content of mangrove species distributed along the Kerala coast of India, and also to address the critical issue of assessing the health of these ecosystems. We identified 16 mangrove species and estimated their chlorophyll concentration levels through a combination of field reconnaissance, in situ radiom...
Reservoir siltation lowers a dam's effective storage capacity, which is mostly determined by the sediment discharge from soil erosion in the watersheds. The morphometric parameters are significant in determining erosional susceptibility of watersheds. In the present study, morpho-hypsometric aspects of the Surya sub-basin, a major tributary of Vait...
The use of chloroquine (CQ) for the treatment of malaria has gained attention in recent years due to its presence in aquatic environments and the potential environmental threats associated with its persistence. CQ is a commonly prescribed medication during the COVID-19 pandemic, and its presence in river water has been reported. CQ enters into rive...
Hypsometric analysis is a powerful tool in identifying geomorphic stages and erosion status of a river basin. This study focuses on conducting hypsometric analyses on two prominent river basins in southern India, the Bharathapuzha River basin (BRB) and the Chaliyar River basin (CRB). The primary aim is to assess the erosion status of these basins b...
The coastal zones are one of the most productive ecosystems in the world, rich in resources, supporting livelihoods and driving economies. The thickly populated coastal stretches of Kerala are grappling with multiple threats in the form of coastal hazards such as sea level rise, high waves, coastal erosion, and coastal flooding. To address these th...
The seismic susceptibility and mitigation management is paramount concern in tectonically active area like Northeastern India. This area has been devastated innumerably during the 1950 Assam great earthquake. The present study area falls in the foreland basin (Brahmaputra Valley) of Eastern Himalaya. This region is seismically vulnerable due to the...
Vypin, Vallarpadam, and Bolgatty are significant tropical coastal islands situated in the humid tropical Kerala region of India, notable for their environmental sensitivity. This study con�ducted a comprehensive assessment of shoreline alterations on these islands by integrating Remote Sensing (RS) and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technique...
The study encompasses the efficiency of the combination of geospatial and fuzzy-based multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) techniques for evaluating the groundwater potential zones of Valapattanam River basin, Northern Kerala, India. The availability of groundwater (GW) mainly depends on parameters like geomorphology, geology, slope, lineament den...
Flooding in urban areas often results severe loss of life and property and has many negative socio-economic impacts. Therefore, identifying the flood prone areas is necessary for future flood hazard mitigation, early warning, and land use planning for infrastructure developments in urban areas. In this study, flood susceptibility modeling is carrie...
The secondary data of 12 physico-chemical parameters from 50 sampling locations was collected from the CGWB, 2018 report for groundwater quality assessment and water quality index (WQI) mapping of phreatic aquifer in Palakkad district, Kerala. pH, electrical conductivity, total dissolved solids, Ca2+ , Mg2+ , Na+ , K+ , NO32−, SO42−, F−, Cl−, HCO3−...
The radiogenic isotope radon (222Rn) is an excellent tracer for monitoring and identifying several hydrogeological processes because of having a short half-life and considerably presence of large concentration in groundwater relative to the surface water. The groundwater radon distribution in various geological formation of coastal and inland regim...
Pookode, the freshwater lake in the Western Ghats, is a well-known tourist place in southern India, and human interference has turned the otherwise serene environment into a polluted one. This paper discusses the geochemical and textural characteristics of the Pookode lake and by determining the sedimentation rate, an attempt is made to predict the...
Landslide susceptibility maps are vital tools used by decision-makers to adopt mitigation strategies for future calamities. In this context, research on landslide susceptibility modelling has become a topic of relevance and is in constant evolution. Though various machine-learning techniques (MLTs) have been identified for landslide susceptibility...
The western flanks of the Western Ghats are one of the major landslide hotspots in India. Recent rainfall triggered landslide incidents in this humid tropical region necessitating the accurate and reliable landslide susceptibility mapping (LSM) of selected parts of Western Ghats for hazard mitigation. In this study, a GIS-coupled fuzzy Multi-Criter...
Corals are the visible indicators of the disasters induced by global climate change and anthropogenic activities and have become a highly vulnerable ecosystem on the verge of extinction. Multiple stressors could act individually or synergistically which results in small to large scale tissue degradation, reduced coral covers, and makes the corals v...
Photo-driven advanced oxidation process (AOP) with pharmaceutical wastewater has been poorly investigated so far. This paper presents the results of an experimental investigation on the photocatalytic degradation of emerging pharmaceutical contaminant chloroquine (CLQ) in water using zinc oxide (ZnO) nanoparticles as the catalyst and solar light (S...
Pilot study of the landslide occurred at Kudayathoor near Thodupuzha, Idukki district, Kerala. 5 members of a single family lost their lives in this disaster.
This study concerned the assessment of changes in the coastline of Kavvayi beach and its nine islands in a tropical coastal wetland using remote sensing (RS) data and geographic information systems (GIS), as this sedimentary environment is still poorly characterized. The satellite
data used were from LANDSAT images (30 m spatial resolution) (MSS—v...
The need for sustainable groundwater resource management increases with demand of clean water across the planet for industrial, agriculture, and domestic uses. In the present study, an attempt has been made to delineate the groundwater potential zones (GWPZ) in a tropical river basin, viz. Achankovil river basin (ARB), using GIS and analytical hier...
Due to the unique blend of physiography, climate, and socio-economic factors, the windward slopes of the southern Western Ghats (WG) are highly susceptible to the occurrence of landslides. The present study compares the efficiency of advanced deep learning and machine learning techniques, such as deep neural network (DNN), and random forest (RF) wi...
Groundwater plays a vital role in the development of ecological niches, the durability of the environment, and the socio-economic growth of an area. To meet the demand for groundwater over the increasing population, the scientific community stresses the prospective of identifying groundwater potential zones (GWPZ), aiming at conservation, planning,...
Canopy cover in forests and its density is the most significant property, since the vegetation cover determines the environmental and ecosystem health of the forest. An attempt was made to understand the forest canopy density (FCD) using a model by integrating remote sensing and GIS approaches along with the field verification data in the Western G...
Climate change-induced marine hazards are increasingly threatening coastal zones, with a two-fold increase in the last decade. In this study, we assessed coastal vulnerability using the multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) method in conjunction with geospatial applications. Data on five physical variables: geomorphology, coastal slope, shoreline c...
An assessment of anomalies in the hierarchical organization of the drainage network in the Kuttiyadi River Basin (KuRB), Kerala, has been performed by considering various morphometric parameters such as bifurcation index (R), hierarchical anomaly index (∆a), hierarchical anomaly density (ga), and stream gradient index (SL) in a geographical informa...
Widespread damage and coseismic ground disturbances are generally associated with
large magnitude and/or shallow focus earthquakes. Surprisingly, a deep focus (34 km),
moderate magnitude earthquake (Mw6) occurred near the Kopili fault zone in Sonitpur
district, Assam, India, on 28 April 2021 and created intense ground shaking and extensive damage a...
Widespread damage and coseismic ground disturbances are generally associated with
large magnitude and/or shallow focus earthquakes. Surprisingly, a deep focus (34 km),
moderate magnitude earthquake (Mw 6) occurred near the Kopili fault zone in Sonitpur
district, Assam, India, on 28 April 2021 and created intense ground shaking and extensive damage...
The ionic and isotopic ratios of some lakes in the Larsemann Hills in East Antarctica are determined to assess the lakes' chemical and isotopic evolution. The lakes occupied the natural depressions carved by glacial abrasions forming small basins, thus providing suitable water accumulation locales under lacustrine conditions. Lakes in the Grovness...
Plastics, especially microplastics in soils, are considered a severe environmental issue worldwide. However,
globally, the main research focus is on microplastic pollution in the marine environment, the microplastic
pollution on soils and sediments remains on the sideline so far. But the fact is that microplastics are omnipresent
in terrestrial...
The geomorphic evolutionary characteristics and the stages of fluvial landscape evolution of the Chalakudy River Basin (CRB), South Western Ghats, based on hypsometry from SRTM DEM data and Survey of India (SOI) topo-maps has been attempted in the present study. The relative tectonic activity index (Iat) has been interpreted from the drainage morph...
The novel SARS-CoV-2 virus influenced the world severely in the first half of 2020 caused shut down of all kind of human activities. It is reported that a word-wide ecological improvement in terms of air quality and water quality during this lock down period. In the present study, an attempt has been made to study the progression in water quality t...
Ensuring the availability of adequate quantity and quality of water to meet demands of domestic sector has become the prime objective for the developing countries like India. The coastal and the nearby inland region are the places of intense human activity due to urbanisation and industrialization leading to the depletion and degradation of environ...
Unscientific urbanization in coastal cities has enforced the need for understanding groundwater recharge sources and processes for sustainable development. In this paper, stable isotope compositions of precipitation, groundwater and river water were determined to understand the significant recharge sources of phreatic aquifers in the two differentl...
The recurrent forest fires have been a serious management concern in southern Western Ghats, India. This study investigates the applicability of various geospatial data, machine learning techniques (MLTs) and spatial statistical tools to demarcate the forest fire susceptible regions of the forested landscape of the Wayanad district in the southern...
Over the last few decades, anthropogenic activities have triggered the rate of change in the function of mangrove ecosystems in coastal urban areas. Satellite imagery provides valuable information for mangrove mapping and monitoring. Metrics derived from the linear regression analysis of spectral indices (SIs) derived from satellites are commonly u...
In this study, radon (222 Rn) concentration in groundwater sampled from the phreatic aquifers of urban and peri-urban ensemble of Kozhikode District, Kerala, Southern India, was assessed using RAD-7 detector with RAD H 2 O accessory. The 222 Rn concentration in the urban zone varied from 0.66 to 35.1 Bq/L with an average value of 6.2 Bq/L, whereas...
The Western Ghats (WG), an elevated passive continental margin along the southwestern coast of India, is the most widely populated biodiversity hot spot in the world. Monsoon climate is prevalent throughout the length of the Western Ghats. The WG region is prone to the occurrence of various hydro-climatic disasters such as extreme rainfall-driven f...
Value addition of fresh tender jackfruit (Artocarpus heterophyllus L.) for vegetable purpose has gained much popularity due to its inherent nutritional and health benefits. For industries involved in value addition of tender jackfruit, rapid characterization of raw material is essential for screening and routine quality evaluation. But, conventiona...
In the case of Western Ghats of Kerala located in southern India, landslides become the most devastating hazard during the monsoon season is mainly because of intense rainfall. The recent landslides struck in the months of June and August 2018 were the worst in the history of the state as the damages to life and property happened were very dangerou...
Geospatial techniques are useful for near real-time monitoring of drought and towards devising local-level effective drought management plan. Based on the historic and current remote sensing data, one can identify the influence of drought on the vegetation status by analyzing the anomaly/drought condition of a particular area of interest (AOI) thro...
Trend analysis for the long-term average temperature and rainfall of Ethiopia during 1901 to 2015 has been performed to understand the pattern of these important meteorological features under climate change. The rainfall characterizations viz., precipitation concentration index (PCI), seasonality index (SI), rainfall anomaly index (RAI) and departu...
Hyperspectral images are being used in various fields. The main objective of the present study was to use hyperspectral imagery from Hyperion with Spectral Angle Mapper (SAM) and Support Vector Machine (SVM) for discriminating the landuse/landcover classes in Kozhikode district, Kerala which constitutes a combination of different physiographic land...
The study encompasses the application of fuzzy based multi-criteria decision making (MCDM)- geospatial framework (GIS-Fuzzy-AHP) for evaluating index based groundwater potential assessment in two differently urbanized clusters of Northern Kerala, Southern India. The framework presents a very powerful way of managing groundwater at a regional and gl...
To better assess the groundwater recharge pattern of the Kuttiyadi River Basin (KRB) situated in Northern Kerala, the oxygen (δ¹⁸O ‰) and hydrogen (δD‰) isotopic compositions of river water, reservoir water and groundwater were determined. Isotopic characterization of the waters of the basin showed that river water experienced altitude effect from...
The study aims to find out the ionic and isotopic compositions of some lakes in the Schirmacher Oasis in east Antarctica. The water samples were collected from 12 lakes near the Indian Antarctic station, Maitri. The chemistry of lake water indicates contribution from glacial melt water and lithology of the area. Evaporation from shallow lakes was a...
Development of Spectral Library for Hyperspectral data with a Special emphasis on Paddy
The study aims to create a laboratory spectral library for the mineral beryl by using the spectroradiometer instrument and the Envi software. The mineral collected from Sevapure area of Kadavur Basin. The laboratory spectra were created and matched with the USGS spectral library. For the study of the spectra an imagery file platform is needed and t...
The study aims to create a laboratory spectral library for the mineral beryl by using the spectroradiometer instrument and the Envi software. The mineral collected from Sevapure area of Kadavur Basin. The laboratory spectra were created and matched with the USGS spectral library. For the study of the spectra an imagery file platform is needed and t...
This study was carried out with the objective of identifying the trends in season, annual rainfall and occurrence of drought events using different statistical methods for the period of 110 years for Kozhikode district of Kerala, India. The results showed that the average annual rainfall of Kozhikode is 3177 mm with the standard deviation of 551.7...
Timely irrigation at specific phenophases of crop plays an important role in agricultural water management. Understanding stage specific crop response to drought becomes important in formulating strategies to mitigate stress. Experiment was conducted to assess the sensitivity of okra in terms of growth, biomass partitioning, leaf photosynthetic par...
Landslide susceptibility analysis, a precursory stage in landslide hazard and risk assessment was carried out in the study using geospatial techniques. Malappuram district which consist of highly undulating terrains including ecologically sensitive segments of Western Ghats selected for the analysis. Five major Landslide influencing factors such as...
The groundwater vulnerability analysis addresses the degree of sensitivity of groundwater system towards
changes in both intrinsic/inherent and extrinsic factors. With this aim, an integrated FAHP-GIS-based modified
DRASTIC (DRASTIC-L) method was followed in order to address the response of various hydro-geological indicators
towards attenuation of...
The integrated application of Geographic Information System (GIS) and Multi Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) technique is employed for groundwater (GW) suitability zonation in the phreatic coastal aquifer of two differently urbanized clusters in the south west coast of India. The normalized weights in accordance with the WHO and BIS standards were o...
This work is presented as Chapter 7 in an edited book on Coastal Zone Management published by Elsevier. This chapter brought out the decadal scale changes that occurred along parts of east and west coasts of India based on an analysis of series of satellite remote sensing data. The impact of global, regional, and local scale causes and the coastal...
Perceiving the potential of springs as alternate potable water resource, the present
work addressed the quantity and quality of spring water as well as possible sociocultural impacts by these springs-based water supply schemes in Wayanad, a high
land district of Kerala. Top prioritization to Wayanad region due to its large mass of
tribal population...
Realized changes in the climate over Kerala received more attention during recent times under the back to back drought conditions prevailing over the state. The year 2016 registered as one of the worst and extreme drought year over Kerala in recent past. This extreme drought condition may be attributed to the combined effect of realized changes in...
Hypsometric analysis is a significant tool for assessing the influence of geologic and tectonicfactors on topography and also to prioritize sub-watersheds based on soil erosion and runoff. To understand the type of erosive processes and relative age of land forms, hypsometric analysis is carried out for all the 15 sub-basins of Meenachil River Basi...
An integrated morphometric and hypsometric analysis coupled with asymmetric factor used as a proxy for the landscape evolution of the catchment of Karuvannur River. The present study area is a sixth order tropical river in the central Kerala which supplies water and sediments to the Vembanad-Kol Ramsar site. The Karuvannur River Basin (KRB) has bee...
The increasing availability of remote sensing imageries with different spatial, spectral, temporal and radiometric characteristics expands the horizon of our choices in imageries and vegetation mapping. Among the various techniques in vegetation mapping the use of vegetative indices confiscates the simplest and easiest one to understand and calcula...
This paper discusses the ancient perennial water abstraction structures–Keni–developed by the tribal communities in Wayanad district, Kerala, southwest coast of India. Keni is shallow wooden abstraction structure built in the soil zone where the water table is near or above the ground level. These traditional water abstraction structures are perfec...
The State of Maharashtra has vast stretches of estuaries, creeks and mangrove swamps, which offers great potential for aquaculture, particularly for mud crab farming. In view of the natural resources and market potential for mud crab, the Department of Forests, Government of Maharashtra plans to promote mud crab farming through a novel approach, wh...
Study on variability in area, production, and productivity of coffee in India during last decade indicates that area and production of coffee is increasing whereas yield of coffee is decreasing trend during the period 1990–1991 to 2015–2016. There was increasing trend of Robusta coffee and decreasing trend of Arabica coffee yields in India with thr...
The efficiency of GIS, RS and multi-criteria tools in isolating potential groundwater (GW) zones in the Kuttiyadi River basin (KRB), Kerala, has been robustly demonstrated by analysis of relevant data. To infer geohydrological makeup and consequent behavior of the KRB in respect of GW potential, firstly, various thematic layers viz. geomorphology,...
Landfill areas have received significant emphasis by the geo-technical community in the recent years as large structures are being built in these sensitive areas due to the scarcity of land in the urban area. The high cost of these structures has dictated the need for accurate and precise strength measurement as a basis for improving foundation des...
Morphometric analysis has been commonly applied for the prioritization of watersheds. The present study makes an attempt to prioritize six sub-watersheds of a tropical river basin, Thrissur District, Kerala using Geographic Information System (GIS) technique and shuttle radar topographic mission (SRTM) data. The shaded relief and slope maps are gen...
Questions
Questions (5)
With heavy down-pour of rainfall throughout the Kerala state lead to most devastating flood in the state, marooning several residential areas, agricultural fields, etc. To map the aerial extent of the flood inundation areas in various district of Kerala to estimate the total loss and also to take some real-time relief measures to ensure the safety of the citizen
Is any satellite based prediction system for for forest fire
