Kabindra Adhikari Editor

Dr. S. Dharumarajan, Senior scientist in ICAR-National Bureau of Soil Survey and Land Use Planning, Bangalore, India. He received his PhD degree from Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi and Post Doc from The University of Sydney, Australia. He has 12 years of experience and expertise in the field of land resource inventorisation, land degradation assessment and digital soil resource mapping. He has handled various research projects financed by ICAR, French Natural Research agency, Ministry of Environment and Forest, Climate Change, Dept. of Space, Tamil Nadu State Planning Commission and World Bank in various capacities. He has published more than 50 research papers in peer reviewed national and international journals. He has been awarded Endeavour Research fellowship – 2016, ISSLUP young scientist award and ICAR-NBSS&LUP foundation day awards. Presently his research is focused on operationalisation of digital soil mapping products and integration of soil data for the wider environmental/earth modeling. Dr. Kaliraj Seenipandi is a scientist at the Central Geomatics Laboratory, National Centre for Earth Science Studies, Thiruvananthapuram. He received his MSc in remote sensing and geoinformation technology with a first from Madurai Kamaraj University, Madurai, and his MTech in geomatics from the Indian Institute of Surveying and Mapping, Survey of India, Hyderabad. He was awarded the DST-INSPIRE Fellowship (both JRF and SRF) for his PhD in remote sensingegeotechnology from the Centre for GeoTechnology, Manonmaniam Sundaranar University, Tirunelveli, Tamil Nadu, India. He has specialized in remote sensing, geoinformatics, and GIS modeling of earth and environmental processes. He has published over 30 research papers in the earth and environment fields and more than 25 proceedings in national and international conferences. He was awarded the Young Scientist of the Year 2016 award by the International Foundation for Environment and Ecology, Kolkata, in association with the Confederation of Indian Universities, New Delhi, and the Green Technologist of the Year 2017 award by the Scientific and Environmental Research Institute, New Delhi, in association with the Indian Institute of Ecology and Environment, New Delhi. His research interests are in the fields of remote sensing, geoinformatics, GIS modeling, earth and environmental dynamics, coastal vulnerability assessment, and natural resource monitoring and management. Dr. Kabindra Adhikari is a soil scientist at the USDA-ARS, Grassland, Soil and Water Research Laboratory in Texas, United States. He received his PhD from the Aarhus University, Denmark, and MSc from the Ghent University, Belgium. He has an extensive soil survey experience from around the world and has played important roles in international meetings in digital soil mapping and pedometrics. His research interests include digital soil mapping, precision agriculture, and soil–landscape modeling. Dr. Lalitha Manickam, Scientist in ICAR-National Bureau of Soil Survey and Land Use Planning, Bangalore, India. She received her PhD degree in Soil Science and Agricultural Chemistry from Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore, India. She was awarded IPI JRF for MSc program and DCSCMS-SRF award (Remote sensing for agricultural applications) for PhD from Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore. She has specialized in Soil survey, mapping, pedotransfer functions, modelling and soil spectral studies. She has published over 50 research papers in soil resource assessment, mapping, and land degradation, over 10 book chapters and more than 25 proceedings in national and international conferences. She has 3 best paper awards by Indian Institute of Soil Science, New Delhi, Indian Society of Soil Survey and Land Use Planning, Nagpur and Indian Society of Agricultural Information Technology in association with University of agricultural science, Dharwad, Karnataka. Her research interests are in the field of Soil survey and mapping, Land degradation assessment, Soil spectral studies and Land resource measurement and monitoring. Dr. Nirmal Kumar, Sr. Scientist (Agricultural Physics) with specialization in Remote Sensing and GIS applications in Natural Resource Management, graduated from the Institute of Agricultural Sciences, Banaras Hindu University, Uttar Pradesh, India in 2005. He did his post graduation (2007) from Division of Agricultural Physics, Indian Institute of Agricultural Research, New Delhi and doctoral degree in Soil Science and Agricultural Chemistry from Indira Gandhi Krishi Vishwavidyalaya, Raipur in 2018. He joined Agricultural Research Service as a scientist in 2009 at Division of Remote Sensing Applications, ICAR-National Bureau of Soil Survey and Land Use Planning, Nagpur. He has twelve years of experience in research and training in the field of Remote Sensing, Geographical information System (GIS), Soil Survey and Pedology, and Land Evaluation. His current research interests are Web GIS, Soil Spectroscopy, and machine learning. He published more than 50 peer-reviewed research papers in international and national journals of repute and authored 9 books.