Krishna Rao

Krishna Rao

Earth Scientist

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A list of all the posts and pages found on the site. For you robots out there is an XML version available for digesting as well.

Pages

Posts

blog

letters

2015

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2016

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2017

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2018

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2019

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2020

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2021

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2022

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projects

Fix the Jet

Published:

Make images and figures colorblind friendly by swapping their colormaps

publications

Satellite-based vegetation optical depth as an indicator of drought-driven tree mortality

Published in Remote Sensing of Environment, 2019

This paper is about developing a scalable plant drought stress indicator using vegetation optical depth.

Recommended citation: Rao, K., Anderegg, W.R.L., Sala, A., Martínez-Vilalta, J. & Konings, A.G. (2019). Satellite-based vegetation optical depth as an indicator of drought-driven tree mortality. Remote Sens. Environ., 227, 125–136. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0034425719301208

Drainage canals in Southeast Asian peatlands increase carbon emissions

Published in AGU Advances, 2021

This paper presents a novel convolutional neural network to detect canals and study the effect of canals on land subsidence.

Recommended citation: Dadap, N. C., Hoyt, A. M., Cobb, A. R., Oner, D., Kozinski, M., Fua, P. V., Rao, K., Harvey, C. F., & Konings, A. G. (2021). Drainage Canals in Southeast Asian Peatlands Increase Carbon Emissions. AGU Advances, 2(1), e2020AV000321. https://doi.org/10.1029/2020AV000321 https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2020AV000321

Interannual Variations of Vegetation Optical Depth Are Due to Both Water Stress and Biomass Changes

Published in Geophysical Research Letters, 2021

This paper re-examines the commonly held assumption that VOD interannual variations are proportional to interannual variations in biomass, and shows that the assumption for the most part, is invalid.

Recommended citation: Konings, A. G., Holtzman, N. M., Rao, K., Xu, L., & Saatchi, S. S. (2021). Interannual Variations of Vegetation Optical Depth are Due to Both Water Stress and Biomass Changes. Geophysical Research Letters, 48(16), e2021GL095267. https://doi.org/10.1029/2021gl095267 https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/2021GL095267

DamageMap: A post-wildfire damaged buildings classifier

Published in International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 2021

This paper presents an AI-based method to classify damaged buildings using post-wildfire images only.

Recommended citation: Galanis, M., Rao, K., Yao, X., Tsai, Y.-L., Ventura, J., & Fricker, G. A. (2021). DamageMap: A post-wildfire damaged buildings classifier. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 102540. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijdrr.2021.102540 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221242092100501X

Side-Facing UHF-Band Radar System to Monitor Tree Water Status

Published in IGARSS 2022 - 2022 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium, 2022

A new ground-based radar system to monitor vegetatation water at plot-scales

Recommended citation: Rao, K., Ulloa, Y. J., Bienert, N., Chiariello, N. R., Holtzman, N. M., Quetin, G. R., et al. (2022). Side-Facing UHF-Band Radar System to Monitor Tree Water Status. In International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS) (Vol. 2022-July, pp. 5559–5562). Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc. https://doi.org/10.1109/IGARSS46834.2022.9883620 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/9883620

Dry Live Fuels Increase the Likelihood of Lightning‐Caused Fires

Published in Geophysical Research Letters, 2023

Mimicking a randomized control trial of wildfires, scientists use satellites to uncover the key role of vegetation dryness in wildfire risk, aiding wildfire management and preparedness in California.

Recommended citation: Rao, K., Williams, A.P., Diffenbaugh, N.S., Yebra, M., Bryant, C. and Konings, A.G., 2023. Dry Live Fuels Increase the Likelihood of Lightning‐Caused Fires. Geophysical Research Letters, 50(15), p.e2022GL100975. https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2022GL100975

talks

Stormwater drainage

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This talk presented retrofitting measures for the storwater drainage system of the IIT Madras campus. The 650-acre campus’ stormwater drainage network is more than 50 years old fails frequently during big storms. The talk focussed on presenting a 3-phase expansion plan to include-

  1. New culverts at frequently-flooded areas with high traffic
  2. Stormwater drainage basin to control overflow from the campus lake
  3. Sustainable stormwater drainage elements such as swales, greenroofs, etc.