User:Shakilrom

Professor Shakil Ahmad Romshoo, Dean for Research at the University of Kashmir, India was born on 13 April, 1964 in Kashmir, India and obtained his Ph.D. in Water resources engineering from the University of Tokyo, Japan and M.S. in Remote Sensing and GIS from the Asian Institute of Technology, Bangkok Thailand. With more than 32 years’ research/academic experience, Professor Shakil Romshoo has worked, in the past as a Scientist at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), Tokyo and Fellow at The Energy and Research Institute (TERI), New Delhi. He headed the Dept. of Earth Sciences, Kashmir university for more than 11 years from 2004-2008 and 2011-2019. He has been heading the Geeoinformatics Program at the Kashmir university since 2010. He has published more than 200 peer reviewed articles in national/international journals and have guided 19 M.Phil./Ph.D. students till date. Besides academics, administration and consultancy, he is engaged in collaborative and sponsored research on hydrology, glaciology and climate change studies in the Himalaya. He is a member of several policymaking committees and working groups related to environment, water, climate change and disaster management at the state, national and international level. The peers have acknowledged the multidisciplinary academic and research contribution made by Prof. Romshoo during 31 years of his academic/research experience in earth and environmental sciences, evident from the Citation Index of 2100, h-Index of 25, i-20 index of 33 and i-10 index of 54 and cumulative impact factor score of 243 for his research work as recorded by the Google Scholar at the end of June, 2020. The knowledge outcome from some of his research projects have fed into the policymaking and planning for disaster management, environmental management and climate change adaptation strategies at the national/state level. He was awarded the National Geoscience award 2013 for my significant contribution to the use of geo-information technology for earth and environmental sciences. In 2019, he was awarded the Satish Dhawan Award by the Indian Society of Remote sensing (ISRS) for his life time contribution in the development and application of remote sensing algorithms for earth and environmental sciences.

The focus of his research remote sensing and GIS for developing hydrological, glaciological and climate change applications, with the geographic focus of north western Himalaya. Prof. Romshoo has used POLInSAR for assessing soil moisture under varied field conditions. Using the remotely sensed soil moisture in hydrological models, he has researched the better characterization and quantification of the hydrological processes using distributed hydrological models. Extending the approach of SAR-based soil moisture estimation to plant moisture, he demonstrated the use of SAR for biomass estimation and for implementation of the Kyoto protocol to the UNFCCC. He has made an extensive use of GIS for watershed hydrology and characterization in order to understand and model the land surface processes in the mountainous western Himalaya. I have quantified the sources of nutrient loading to the mountainous high altitude lakes and wetlands in the Kashmir Himalayan region using geospatial modelling approach for which he was awarded the Kasumigaura International prize in 2009 by the government of Japan.

Under the collaborative research on glaciology and climate change, Prof. Romshoo has coproduced a few significant research outcomes. My research on understanding the glacier dynamics and the impacts of climate change on cryosphere in the Himalaya indicates that the glaciers are responding differentially to climate change. Prof. Romshoo has researched and provided scientific basis to the depleting streamflow in the upper Indus basin, the waters of which are shared between India and Pakistan under the Indus Water Treaty. He has won more than a dozen awards from various governments, scientific and civil societies for my research work on various aspects of the earth and environmental sciences. He is a Fellow of the Indian Society of Remote Sensing since 2019.