Recent Group News (past 12 months)
19 Dec 2023: Chris officially completed his PhD corrections - congratulations on the latest 'Doctor' to graduate from the group. Chris is now working on developing crop-water modelling tools with Tim as part of the TRANSCEND project
4 Dec 2023: Welcome to new postdoc - Matt Lees - who just joined the group where he will be working on developing new EO-based approaches for monitoring agricultural land and water use to support water allocation planning as part of the TRANSCEND. Matt recently completed his PhD at Stanford University in the United States, where his research developed approaches for monitoring groundwater storage and land subsidence using InSAR data.
1 Oct 2023: Tim kicked off a new project in the group - Just Earth Observation for Conservation (JEO4C). JEO4C is co-led with Rose Pritchard in the Global Development Institute at University of Manchester, and also involves other colleagues at Manchester and externally. JEO4C is a 5-year ESRC Large Grant that will transform knowledge about the justice benefits and risks of increased use of EO data and technologies in conservation, working in four sites globally (Peak District National Park in the UK, Maya Biosphere Reserve in Guatemala, Mount Kenya National Park in East Africa, Parc Natural de Albufera in Spain). Stay tuned for adverts for Postdoc, PhD, and project manager positions.
21 Sep 2023: Dhanapal published the first paper from his PhD 'Rights based approaches to forest landscape restoration; learning from the Indian forest policy experience'. The paper documents the changing recognition of community rights in India’s national forest policies from 1865 to 2018, providing lessons on enabling factors and barriers to rights to support forest landscape restoration in India and globally.
15 Feb 2023: Tim and Ben attended the kick off meeting for the TRANSCEND project in Salamanca, Spain. Tim presented the group's planned contributions to monitoring and modelling of water allocation policies as part of the next 4 years of the project.
6 Feb 2023: New PhD student, Brian Kiberenge, joined the group working on identifying technical and financial solutions for supporting intensification of irrigation in smallholder farming environments. Pauline's PhD is funded through a scholarship from the University of Manchester. Welcome to the group, Brian.
6 Jan 2023: Chris published the first paper from his PhD in Scientific Reports, focused on identifying links between monsoon variability and rice production in India through machine learning. Congratulations, Chris.
1 Jan 2023: Tim and Ben started a new project for year project TRANSCEND (Transformational and robust adaptation to water scarcity and climate change under deep uncertainty) funded by UKRI and the European Commission. Our group will be leading work packages as part of the project to develop new monitoring and modelling tools to support water allocation policy design and implementation in seven river basins around the worldwide. Stay tuned for adverts for Postdoc positions and affiliated PhD opportunities.
17 Dec 2022: Tim was appointed as a Bureau Member of the International Water Resources Association (IWRA) Task Force Committee on 'Water & SDGs - Downscaling Water relevant SDGs'. He will bring expertise in water resource economics and agricultural water management to support the Task Force's goal to facilitate SDGs realization to support sustainable water resources management globally.
2 Dec 2022: Tim was appointed as a Global Fellow of the Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute in the United States. He will be working over the next year to advance the Institute's goals of supporting sustainable agricultural water management globally, with a focus on policy monitoring and enforcement.
Older News (>12 months)
13 Sep 2022: New PhD student, Pauline Kimani, joined the group to work on research to support sustainable intensification of cereal production systems in South Asia using crop modelling and remote sensing. Pauline's PhD is funded as part of the University of Manchester and University of Melbourne dual award programme. Welcome to the group, Pauline.
26 July 2022: Tim attended the joint IAEA-FAO International Symposium on Managing Land and Water for Climate-Smart Agriculture. He presented the group's AquaCrop-OSPy model and AquaPlan web app, to be released in August 2022.
18 July 2022: Another student graduates - Tom K successfully defended his thesis titled `Assessing the value of improved information and management strategies for optimal irrigation scheduling'. Congratulations to Tom on this great achievement.
17 June 2022: Sarah successfully defended her thesis titled `Adapting to Climate Variability and Change in West Africa: the Role of Irrigation Development' with minor corrections. Congratulations to Sarah on this important milestone.
23 May 2022: Tim convened a session at the European Geosciences Union General Assembly with colleagues from IIASA, Politecnico di Milano, Universitat Politècnica de València, and University of Tübingen focused on 'Water resources policy and management - managing trade-offs at the nexus between water, food, energy and the environment'.
5 Feb 2022: Tim and Roshan published a policy brief on the past, present, and future role of dams for food security, rural growth, and climate adaptation highlighting the group's research as part of the FutureDams project
13 Dec 2021: Tim gave an invited presentation at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting focused on the importance of monitoring and enforcement for sustainable groundwater management.
12 July 2021: Tim was part of a successful bid - led by Rose Pritchard in Manchester's Global Development Institute (GDI) - to the Manchester Centre for Digital Trust and Society Seed corn funding competition. Stay tuned for more updates about their project that will explore issues of privacy, trust and justice in the use satellite data products for conservation and natural resource management.
18 July 2021: Tom K gave a talk at the SciPy Conference about our AquaCrop-OSPy model and use for supporting data-driven agricultural water management.
1 July 2021: Roshan convened a session at the 2021 Development Studies Association (DSA) Unsettling Development conference on 'The World Commission on Dams +20 years - revisiting dams, decision-making and development'. The session also contained presentations by group members Tom H and Sarah related to our FutureDams research on irrigation development in Sub-Saharan Africa.
9 June 2021: Tom, Tim and Roshan published an article in The Conversation about our recent Nature Sustainability paper on large-scale irrigation projects in Sub-Saharan Africa, discussing some of the lessons that need to be learned as the region enters a renewed era of investment in irrigation infrastructure projects.
27 May 2021: We launched the Python version of AquaCrop-OS software, which has been developed by Group PhD student Tom Kelly. You can read the paper about the model here, and download AquaCrop-OSPy code and Jupyter notebook tutorials from this link.
7 May 2021: Tim gave an invited talk about the group's work on irrigation development in Sub-Saharan Africa to Instituto Mexicano de Tecnología del Agua (IMTA). You can watch the recording here.
28 April 2021: Tim and Roshan convened a virtual session at the European Geosciences Union General Assembly with colleagues from Cranfield University, Universitat Politècnica de València, and Athens University of Economics and Business focused on 'Water resources policy and management - managing trade-offs at the nexus between water, food, energy and the environment'. There were also presentations from Tim, Roshan, Tom H, and Sarah at the same conference.
22 March 2021: To celebrate World Water Day, the University of Manchester has been highlighting some of the exciting water-related research going on around campus. Roshan and Tim contributed an article on their current work on groundwater irrigation and monsoon risks in South Asia.
10 March 2021: Group PhD student, Seun Adeluyi, passed his viva today with minor corrections for his thesis entitled "The potential of remote sensing technologies for monitoring the productivity of dry season irrigated rice". Congratulations to Seun on this great achievement!
9 February 2021: Tim gave invited talk at the 2021 California Groundwater Conference about his recent work on the opportunities and challenges for using remote sensing to support monitoring and enforcement of agricultural water rights.
18 January 2021: Our new paper, led by Tom H, is now out in Nature Sustainability showing how large-scale irrigation projects in Sub-Saharan Africa have systematically failed to deliver proposed agricultural benefits over the past 60+ years. You can learn more about the work through this blog post and recent FutureDams webinar recording.
4 January 2021: We welcome a new PhD student - Dhanapal Govindarajulu - to the group this week. Dhanapal is co-supervised by Tim together with Johan Oldekop and Rose Pritchard in the Global Development Institute, and will be researching the social and ecological impacts of forest landscape restoration in India supported by a Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) scholarship.
17 December 2020: Chris and Tom H both attended the online American Geophysical Union (AGU) 2020 Fall Meeting to present ongoing work on monsoon climate risks to agriculture in South Asia and irrigation development project evaluation in West Africa.
1 December 2020: AGU Eos published a feature blog covering Tim's recent paper about the potential for satellite data to support agricultural water use monitoring in a special issue of Water Resources Research on 'The Quest for Sustainability of Heavily Stressed Aquifers at Regional to Global Scales'. You can read the article here.
24 November 2020: Tim published a blog post with Anton Urfels (WUR and CIMMYT) on their ongoing work in Nepal and India to identify solutions to sustainably intensify groundwater irrigation in the eastern Indo-Gangetic Plains. You can read the article here.
11 June 2020: Roshan gave a FutureDams series webinar talking about the group's field research with partners at WASCAL and CSIR in Ghana to understand the effectiveness of alternative smallholder irrigation development and investment programmes in the region. You can watch the recording here.
19 Dec 2023: Chris officially completed his PhD corrections - congratulations on the latest 'Doctor' to graduate from the group. Chris is now working on developing crop-water modelling tools with Tim as part of the TRANSCEND project
4 Dec 2023: Welcome to new postdoc - Matt Lees - who just joined the group where he will be working on developing new EO-based approaches for monitoring agricultural land and water use to support water allocation planning as part of the TRANSCEND. Matt recently completed his PhD at Stanford University in the United States, where his research developed approaches for monitoring groundwater storage and land subsidence using InSAR data.
1 Oct 2023: Tim kicked off a new project in the group - Just Earth Observation for Conservation (JEO4C). JEO4C is co-led with Rose Pritchard in the Global Development Institute at University of Manchester, and also involves other colleagues at Manchester and externally. JEO4C is a 5-year ESRC Large Grant that will transform knowledge about the justice benefits and risks of increased use of EO data and technologies in conservation, working in four sites globally (Peak District National Park in the UK, Maya Biosphere Reserve in Guatemala, Mount Kenya National Park in East Africa, Parc Natural de Albufera in Spain). Stay tuned for adverts for Postdoc, PhD, and project manager positions.
21 Sep 2023: Dhanapal published the first paper from his PhD 'Rights based approaches to forest landscape restoration; learning from the Indian forest policy experience'. The paper documents the changing recognition of community rights in India’s national forest policies from 1865 to 2018, providing lessons on enabling factors and barriers to rights to support forest landscape restoration in India and globally.
15 Feb 2023: Tim and Ben attended the kick off meeting for the TRANSCEND project in Salamanca, Spain. Tim presented the group's planned contributions to monitoring and modelling of water allocation policies as part of the next 4 years of the project.
6 Feb 2023: New PhD student, Brian Kiberenge, joined the group working on identifying technical and financial solutions for supporting intensification of irrigation in smallholder farming environments. Pauline's PhD is funded through a scholarship from the University of Manchester. Welcome to the group, Brian.
6 Jan 2023: Chris published the first paper from his PhD in Scientific Reports, focused on identifying links between monsoon variability and rice production in India through machine learning. Congratulations, Chris.
1 Jan 2023: Tim and Ben started a new project for year project TRANSCEND (Transformational and robust adaptation to water scarcity and climate change under deep uncertainty) funded by UKRI and the European Commission. Our group will be leading work packages as part of the project to develop new monitoring and modelling tools to support water allocation policy design and implementation in seven river basins around the worldwide. Stay tuned for adverts for Postdoc positions and affiliated PhD opportunities.
17 Dec 2022: Tim was appointed as a Bureau Member of the International Water Resources Association (IWRA) Task Force Committee on 'Water & SDGs - Downscaling Water relevant SDGs'. He will bring expertise in water resource economics and agricultural water management to support the Task Force's goal to facilitate SDGs realization to support sustainable water resources management globally.
2 Dec 2022: Tim was appointed as a Global Fellow of the Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute in the United States. He will be working over the next year to advance the Institute's goals of supporting sustainable agricultural water management globally, with a focus on policy monitoring and enforcement.
Older News (>12 months)
13 Sep 2022: New PhD student, Pauline Kimani, joined the group to work on research to support sustainable intensification of cereal production systems in South Asia using crop modelling and remote sensing. Pauline's PhD is funded as part of the University of Manchester and University of Melbourne dual award programme. Welcome to the group, Pauline.
26 July 2022: Tim attended the joint IAEA-FAO International Symposium on Managing Land and Water for Climate-Smart Agriculture. He presented the group's AquaCrop-OSPy model and AquaPlan web app, to be released in August 2022.
18 July 2022: Another student graduates - Tom K successfully defended his thesis titled `Assessing the value of improved information and management strategies for optimal irrigation scheduling'. Congratulations to Tom on this great achievement.
17 June 2022: Sarah successfully defended her thesis titled `Adapting to Climate Variability and Change in West Africa: the Role of Irrigation Development' with minor corrections. Congratulations to Sarah on this important milestone.
23 May 2022: Tim convened a session at the European Geosciences Union General Assembly with colleagues from IIASA, Politecnico di Milano, Universitat Politècnica de València, and University of Tübingen focused on 'Water resources policy and management - managing trade-offs at the nexus between water, food, energy and the environment'.
5 Feb 2022: Tim and Roshan published a policy brief on the past, present, and future role of dams for food security, rural growth, and climate adaptation highlighting the group's research as part of the FutureDams project
13 Dec 2021: Tim gave an invited presentation at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting focused on the importance of monitoring and enforcement for sustainable groundwater management.
12 July 2021: Tim was part of a successful bid - led by Rose Pritchard in Manchester's Global Development Institute (GDI) - to the Manchester Centre for Digital Trust and Society Seed corn funding competition. Stay tuned for more updates about their project that will explore issues of privacy, trust and justice in the use satellite data products for conservation and natural resource management.
18 July 2021: Tom K gave a talk at the SciPy Conference about our AquaCrop-OSPy model and use for supporting data-driven agricultural water management.
1 July 2021: Roshan convened a session at the 2021 Development Studies Association (DSA) Unsettling Development conference on 'The World Commission on Dams +20 years - revisiting dams, decision-making and development'. The session also contained presentations by group members Tom H and Sarah related to our FutureDams research on irrigation development in Sub-Saharan Africa.
9 June 2021: Tom, Tim and Roshan published an article in The Conversation about our recent Nature Sustainability paper on large-scale irrigation projects in Sub-Saharan Africa, discussing some of the lessons that need to be learned as the region enters a renewed era of investment in irrigation infrastructure projects.
27 May 2021: We launched the Python version of AquaCrop-OS software, which has been developed by Group PhD student Tom Kelly. You can read the paper about the model here, and download AquaCrop-OSPy code and Jupyter notebook tutorials from this link.
7 May 2021: Tim gave an invited talk about the group's work on irrigation development in Sub-Saharan Africa to Instituto Mexicano de Tecnología del Agua (IMTA). You can watch the recording here.
28 April 2021: Tim and Roshan convened a virtual session at the European Geosciences Union General Assembly with colleagues from Cranfield University, Universitat Politècnica de València, and Athens University of Economics and Business focused on 'Water resources policy and management - managing trade-offs at the nexus between water, food, energy and the environment'. There were also presentations from Tim, Roshan, Tom H, and Sarah at the same conference.
22 March 2021: To celebrate World Water Day, the University of Manchester has been highlighting some of the exciting water-related research going on around campus. Roshan and Tim contributed an article on their current work on groundwater irrigation and monsoon risks in South Asia.
10 March 2021: Group PhD student, Seun Adeluyi, passed his viva today with minor corrections for his thesis entitled "The potential of remote sensing technologies for monitoring the productivity of dry season irrigated rice". Congratulations to Seun on this great achievement!
9 February 2021: Tim gave invited talk at the 2021 California Groundwater Conference about his recent work on the opportunities and challenges for using remote sensing to support monitoring and enforcement of agricultural water rights.
18 January 2021: Our new paper, led by Tom H, is now out in Nature Sustainability showing how large-scale irrigation projects in Sub-Saharan Africa have systematically failed to deliver proposed agricultural benefits over the past 60+ years. You can learn more about the work through this blog post and recent FutureDams webinar recording.
4 January 2021: We welcome a new PhD student - Dhanapal Govindarajulu - to the group this week. Dhanapal is co-supervised by Tim together with Johan Oldekop and Rose Pritchard in the Global Development Institute, and will be researching the social and ecological impacts of forest landscape restoration in India supported by a Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) scholarship.
17 December 2020: Chris and Tom H both attended the online American Geophysical Union (AGU) 2020 Fall Meeting to present ongoing work on monsoon climate risks to agriculture in South Asia and irrigation development project evaluation in West Africa.
1 December 2020: AGU Eos published a feature blog covering Tim's recent paper about the potential for satellite data to support agricultural water use monitoring in a special issue of Water Resources Research on 'The Quest for Sustainability of Heavily Stressed Aquifers at Regional to Global Scales'. You can read the article here.
24 November 2020: Tim published a blog post with Anton Urfels (WUR and CIMMYT) on their ongoing work in Nepal and India to identify solutions to sustainably intensify groundwater irrigation in the eastern Indo-Gangetic Plains. You can read the article here.
11 June 2020: Roshan gave a FutureDams series webinar talking about the group's field research with partners at WASCAL and CSIR in Ghana to understand the effectiveness of alternative smallholder irrigation development and investment programmes in the region. You can watch the recording here.