Bhabani Sankar Das

Bhabani Sankar Das
Photograph of Professor Bhabani Sankar Das Prof Bhabani Sankar Das, Professor at Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur
Born	Template:Birth year and age
Citizenship	Indian
Occupations	Academic, Researcher
Title	Professor
Academic background
Alma mater	Kansas State University (PhD, 1996)
Thesis	(1996)
Academic work
Discipline	Soil science
Sub-discipline	Soil physics, Hydrology, Diffuse reflectance spectroscopy, Digital soil mapping, Hyperspectral remote sensing, Contaminant hydrology
Institutions	Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur
Website	www.iitkgp.ac.in/department/AG/faculty/ag-bsdas

Bhabani Sankar Das (born 1966) is an Indian soil scientist and Professor in the Department of Agricultural and Food Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur (IIT Kharagpur), located in Kharagpur, West Bengal, India. His research focuses on soil physics, contaminant hydrology, soil spectroscopy, hyperspectral remote sensing, and digital soil mapping. He is widely recognised for pioneering contributions to diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (DRS) as a rapid and non-destructive tool for soil testing, and for producing the first comprehensive national-scale digital soil maps for India.

Early life and education

Bhabani Sankar Das was born in 1966. He completed his Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in 1996 from Kansas State University, United States, a leading institution known for its programmes in agricultural and soil sciences. His doctoral research laid a rigorous foundation in soil physics and hydrological modelling, and early publications from this period appeared in leading journals such as the Soil Science Society of America Journal and the Journal of Hydrologic Engineering.

Academic career

Professor Das joined the Department of Agricultural and Food Engineering at Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur in 1999, where he has remained throughout his career, eventually rising to the rank of Professor. IIT Kharagpur, established in 1951 as the first of the Indian Institutes of Technology, is recognised as an Institute of National Importance and was accorded the status of Institute of Eminence by the Government of India in 2019.

He has guided numerous doctoral scholars and postgraduate students, contributed to curriculum development in agricultural and environmental engineering, and collaborated with international institutions including the University of Sydney, ICRISAT, and the Kansas State University.

Research and expertise

Professor Das's research is centred on soil as a foundational component of agricultural systems. His group addresses challenges in soil characterisation, water and nutrient management, and large-scale soil information delivery using advanced sensing and computational technologies.

Soil physics and contaminant hydrology

His foundational expertise lies in soil physics, encompassing the study of water and solute transport processes in soils. His research addresses water flow, contaminant transport, and nutrient dynamics in rice paddy soils and other agricultural systems. He has applied modelling tools such as Hydrus-1D to simulate water and nutrient transport under alternate wetting and drying irrigation practices, contributing to improved water use efficiency in rice cultivation.

Diffuse reflectance spectroscopy and soil characterisation

A major contribution of Professor Das's group is the development and application of diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (DRS) as a rapid, non-destructive, and cost-effective alternative to conventional wet chemistry-based soil testing. His laboratory has developed calibrated spectral algorithms and spectral libraries to estimate a wide range of soil properties — including texture, organic carbon, pH, micronutrients, water holding capacity, and cation exchange capacity — from spectral reflectance data. This work has been validated across multiple spatial and temporal scales and in collaboration with ICRISAT for applicability in smallholder farming systems across South Asia.

Hyperspectral remote sensing

Professor Das's group conducts extensive research in airborne and satellite hyperspectral remote sensing for the estimation of soil and crop parameters at landscape scales. His group has worked with data from sensors such as AVIRIS-NG for mapping soil salinity, texture, and other properties. Research from his group has also explored bidirectional reflectance distribution function (BRDF) corrections in hyperspectral data to improve soil property estimation accuracy.

Digital soil mapping

Professor Das is a leading contributor to digital soil mapping (DSM) in India. His group produced the first national-scale digital maps of key soil properties across India — including texture, pH, soil organic carbon, water holding capacity, cation exchange capacity, and aggregate size distribution parameters — using legacy soil data and environmental covariates. These maps are a major resource for land resource assessment, food security research, and climate modelling in India.

Water remote sensing

His group has also worked on water quality mapping using remote sensing approaches, including the development of water quality parameter maps for the Chilika lagoon in Odisha using satellite data.

Selected publications

The following list is representative and non-exhaustive:

• Das, B.S., and G.J. Kluitenberg (1996). "Moment analysis to estimate degradation rate constants from leaching experiments." Soil Science Society of America Journal, 60: 1724–1731.
• Reddy, N.N., Chakraborty, P., Roy, S., Singh, K., Minasny, B., McBratney, A.B., Biswas, A., Das, B.S. (2021). "Legacy data-based national-scale digital mapping of key soil properties in India." Geoderma.
• Majeed, I., Das, B.S. (2024). "Large-Scale Mapping of Soil Quality Index in Different Land Uses Using Airborne Hyperspectral Data." IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, 62: 1–12.
• Swain, S.R., Chakraborty, P., Panigrahi, N., et al., Das, B.S. (2021). "Estimation of soil texture using Sentinel-2 multispectral imaging data: An ensemble modelling approach." Soil and Tillage Research, 213: 105134.
• Shekhar, S., Mailapalli, D.R., Raghuwanshi, N.S., Das, B.S. (2020). "Hydrus-1D model for simulating water flow through paddy soils under alternate wetting and drying irrigation practice." Paddy and Water Environment, 18: 73–85.

External links

• IIT Kharagpur Faculty Profile
• Google Scholar Profile
• Scopus Author Profile
• ResearchGate Profile
• Vidwan Profile