Harnessing Digital Mapping for Soil Resource Monitoring and Assessment

Pravash Chandra Moharana, Ph.D. is a Senior Scientist (Soil Science) at the National Bureau of Soil Survey and Land Use Planning (NBSS&LUP), Nagpur where he contributes to the advancement of soil survey through extensive research and policy advisory roles. He did his M.Sc. and Ph. D. from Division of Soil Science and Agricultural Chemistry, ICAR-Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi. He has more than 10 years' experience on research work related to spatial modeling and digital soil mapping, assessment of soil organic carbon, soil and land quality evaluation, ecological risk assessment, soil survey, land resource Inventory, land use planning etc. He has played an important role in developing Digital Soil Mapping in the Bikaner, Vidarbha and Bundelkhand region of India, demonstrating the practical impact of land use planning and soil and water conservation technologies under actual field conditions. He has received various prestigious fellowships and awards in his career like FAI Golden Jubilee Award for Outstanding Doctorate Research in Fertilizer Usages, and Young Scientist Award of ICAR- NBSS&LUP. He has published more than 60 research papers in national and international journals; more than 15 book chapters; attended six professional trainings; organized training programmes of national importance for farmers, various stakeholders of state government.

Gaurav Mishra is soil scientist with over 12 years of research experience. He received Master's and Ph.D. in Soil Science from G. B. Pant University of Agriculture and Technology, also known as Pantnagar University, is the first agricultural university of India. Presently, he is working in the Centre of Excellence on Sustainable Land Management at Indian Council of Forestry Research and Education, Dehradun and has mentored many masters and doctoral students. He has edited two books and published over 100 research papers/chapters with over 1700 citations. He was awarded with the ICFRE best research paper award by the Indian Council of Forestry Research and Education, Dehradun in 2020. Dr Mishra has been collaborating with soil scientists within India and abroad on his research in soil carbon dynamics including biogeochemistry, soil health assessment, soil carbon sequestration and its modelling under different spatio-temporal scales.

Ali Keshavarzi, was a Soil scientist and Pedometrician. He was an Associate Professor at Laboratory of Remote Sensing and GIS, Department of Soil Science, University of Tehran and Head of Soil Modeling Software (SoilMod) website at University of Tehran. He was a member of Iran's National Elites Foundation (INEF) and Editorial Board of International Journal of Environmental Health Research [IF=2.20, 2023]. He received the PhD degree in Soil Genesis, Classification and Land Evaluation from University of Tehran in 2015. His research interests were in Data Mining, Spatial Modeling in Soil and Water Sciences, Soil Quality Evaluation and Monitoring, Pedometrics, Ecological Risk Assessment, Computational Intelligence, Heuristic and Metaheuristic Algorithms, Geostatistics and Agrophysics. He had published more than 150 publications in peer-reviewed, international journals, national and international congresses [Citations=1961, h-index=28, i10-index=54].

Azamat Suleymanov, Ph.D. in Soil Science (2021). His research interests include digital soil mapping, soil ecology, remote sensing, and machine learning. Currently, he holds positions at several institutions, including the Ufa Institute of Biology (Laboratory of Soil Science), Ufa State Petroleum Technological University (Department of Environmental Protection and Prudent Exploitation of Natural Resources), St. Petersburg State University (Department of Applied Ecology), and Ufa University of Science and Technology (Department of Geodesy, Cartography and Geographic Information Systems). His international experience includes working at ISRIC (Netherlands) and INRAE (France). He has authored over 55 scientific papers published in international journals indexed in Scopus and Web of Science. Dr. Suleymanov is a member of the international editorial board of the Journal of the Geographical Institute "Jovan Cviji¿" SASA.