Title : Assistant Professor
Name Mohana Sundaram Shanmugam
FoS : Water Engineering and Management
Location : WR 211, WEM Building
Phone : +66 (2) 524 5796
Fax : +66 (2) 524 6425
Email : mohanasundaram@ait.ac.th

Dr. Mohana Sundaram Shanmugam obtained his PhD from IIT, Madras, India and Post-doc from the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, USA. His research interests include irrigation water management, groundwater recharge estimation, soil moisture monitoring and modelling in unsaturated zone, chemical leaching modelling into the groundwater systems, remote sensing and GIS applications for water resources and agriculture and time series and geostatistical modelling of environmental observations

EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND
  1. Ph.D in Water Resources Engineering. Indian Institute of Technology Madras, India (2016)
  2. M.Tech in Agricultural Systems and Management. Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, India (2009)
  3. B.Tech in Agricultural Engineering. Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, India (2007)

RESEARCH INTERESTS
Research interests include irrigation water management, groundwater recharge estimation, soil moisture monitoring and modelling in unsaturated zone, chemical leaching modelling into the groundwater systems, remote sensing and GIS applications for water resources and agriculture and time series and geostatistical modelling of environmental observations.

TEACHING
  1. CE 74.22: Irrigation and Drainage Systems and Management
  2. CE74.52 Groundwater Development and Management
  3. CE74.9010 Selected Topic: Earth Engine for Water Resources Monitoring and Management

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
  1. Talampas, S. I., Shrestha, S., Mohanasundaram, S., & Loc, H. H. (2025). Development of a watershed health assessment framework integrating ecological, social, cultural, economic and policy attributes. International Journal of River Basin Management, 23(1), 55-69. https://doi.org/10.1080/15715124.2023.2242830
  2. Mohanasundaram, S., Baghel, T., Thakur, V., Udmale, P., & Shrestha, S. (2023). Reconstructing NDVI and land surface temperature for cloud cover pixels of Landsat-8 images for assessing vegetation health index in the Northeast region of Thailand. Environmental Monitoring and Assessment, 195(1), 211. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-022-10802-5
  3. Adikari, K. E., Shrestha, S., Ratnayake, D. T., Budhathoki, A., Mohanasundaram, S., & Dailey, M. N. (2021). Evaluation of artificial intelligence models for flood and drought forecasting in arid and tropical regions. Environmental Modelling & Software, 144, 105136. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsoft.2021.105136
  4. Ghimire, U., Shrestha, S., Neupane, S., Mohanasundaram, S., & Lorphensri, O. (2021). Climate and land-use change impacts on spatiotemporal variations in groundwater recharge: A case study of the Bangkok Area, Thailand. Science of The Total Environment, 792, 148370. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.148370
  5. Adhikari, R. K., Mohanasundaram, S., & Shrestha, S. (2020). Impacts of land-use changes on the groundwater recharge in the Ho Chi Minh city, Vietnam. Environmental research, 185, 109440. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envres.2020.109440
  6. Mohanasundaram, S., Suresh Kumar, G., & Narasimhan, B. (2019). A novel deseasonalized time series model with an improved seasonal estimate for groundwater level predictions. H2Open Journal, 2(1), 25-44. https://doi.org/10.2166/h2oj.2019.022
  7. D’Alessio, M., Wang, T., Swift, C.E., Mohana Sundaram, S., Ray, C., (2018). A Tier-I leaching risk assessment of three anticoagulant compounds in the forested areas of Hawai’i, Science of The Total Environment, 630, 889-902. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2018.02.257
  8. Mohanasundaram, S., Balaji N., and Suresh Kumar, G (2016). Transfer function noise modelling of groundwater level fluctuation using threshold rainfall based binary weighted parameter estimation approach, Hydrological Sciences Journal, 62(1), 36-49. https://doi.org/10.1080/02626667.2016.1171325

ONGOING AND COMPLETED PROJECTS
  • Benefits and Challenges of Digitalization in Agriculture and Food System for Enhanced Resilience and Improved Sustainability: Preliminary Assessment Study
    • Duration: September 2024 – July 2025
    • Funding Agency: Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA) and ASEAN
    • Partners: ERIA

AWARDS AND HONORS
Best student paper award for the paper entitled “Groundwater Recharge and Discharge Zones Delineation using Remote Sensing and GIS” from ISAE-2009 conference, Ranchi, India

Best student paper award for the paper entitled “Numerical Modeling of Fluid Flow through Unsaturated Zone using Dual Porosity Approach” from HYDRO-2012 conference, Mumbai, India

PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS
Member, Indian Society of Agricultural Engineers (ISAE)

RESEARCH KEYWORDS
Irrigation water management, Soil water modelling, Remote Sensing and GIS, Crop growth modelling