Meetpal Kukal

• Agricultural hydrology
• Evapotranspiration
• Irrigation science, engineering and management
• Biometeorology and surface energy balance
• Soil health and hydrology

• Kukal, Meetpal S. (2024). Consumptive water use and efficiency of irrigated US corn: Learning from hundreds of site-management-year observations. Water Resources Research, 60(8), e2024WR037434.
• Kukal, Meetpal S. (2024). The US Midwest and High Plains Aquifer-fed croplands are previously unrealized hotspots of extreme evaporative demand exposure. Environmental Research Letters, 19(6), 064062.
• Kukal, Meetpal Singh. (2024). Relative and Unified Skill of Environmental, Edaphic, and Management Factors to Explain Crop Yield Variance Using Machine Learning.
• Kukal, M. S., Kukal, S., Irmak, S., & Vellidis, G. (2024). Drivers of enhanced evaporative demand in US croplands: Determining relative contribution using constrained input scenarios. JAWRA Journal of the American Water Resources Association, 60(1), 79–94.
• Kukal, Meetpal S., & Irmak, S. (2023). Can limits of plant available water be inferred from soil moisture distributions? Agricultural & Environmental Letters, 8(2), e20113.
• Kukal, M. S., & Irmak, S. (2023). Fractional coefficient for estimating physiologically meaningful and diurnal transpiration cycle weighted VPD from daily ambient environmental data. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, 339, 109583.
• Kukal, M. S., & Irmak, S. (2023). Disentangling day-night contributions towards altering atmospheric desiccation strength for US croplands. Agronomy Journal.
• Kukal, M. S., Irmak, S., Dobos, R., & Gupta, S. (2023). Atmospheric dryness impacts on crop yields are buffered in soils with higher available water capacity. Geoderma, 429, 116270.

Kukal conducts applied research, teaching and outreach in hydrologic science and water management, hydroclimatology and soil-plant-atmospheric relations at point to continental scales. In his work, he integrates principles from water and irrigation science, plant physiology, biometeorology, agricultural engineering, agronomics and geospatial science to address questions that lie at the intersection of agriculture, water and climate. His group employs both measurements (in situ, proximal and remote) as well as modeling (data-driven and process-based) approaches to assess and predict crop and water budgets’ response to global change elements and management regimes. He has published more than 50 peer-reviewed research and extension/outreach articles. He has been a PI on USDA-NIFA and NRCS-funded projects focused on hydrologic impacts of climate-smart agriculture.

• ASABE Superior Paper Award
• Educational Aids Blue Ribbon Award, ASABE
• Boyd Scott Graduate Research Award, ASABE
• Folsom Distinguished Dissertation Award, University of Nebraska
• Outstanding Graduate Research and Creative Activities Award, University of Nebraska