Overview
I am Kashif Mahmud, Assistant Professor at Kimbell School of Geosciences, Midwestern State University, and the primary investigator of "Remote Sensing and Modeling" Lab. I'm also affiliated as an Adjunct Senior Lecturer with the School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of New South Wales, Sydney Australia.
We are modelers and remote sensing experts with applications in both hydrogeology and terrestrial carbon cycle. We apply a diversity of approaches to the characterization of complex environmental systems. This includes two extremely innovative techniques for the characterization of aquifers using training image-based algorithms. In addition, we propose an innovative use of remote sensing techniques in caves and also relate this scheme to the characterization of flow processes in karst environments, focused on the integration of new data types such as terrestrial LiDAR and drip count loggers. My lab is also interested in understanding the response of the carbon cycle and terrestrial ecosystems to climate and environmental changes. We are using data assimilation methods to constrain global carbon cycle sink projections and model carbon-climate feedback.
Recent news (2025)
April 21-24, 2025: Three of my graduate students (Rowann Remie, Elizabeth Elkins, and Matthew Kaspar) successfully defended their theses. ​​​​
Previous news (2024)
July 3, 2024: UGROW scholar Jarette Greene presents his project outcome at the MSU Symposium and receives the award.
June 28, 2024: I conduct a workshop for the 2024 Summer YES Camp with the Engineering Department with the help of graduate student Elizabeth Elkins. We display our terrestrial LiDAR instrument to the middle/high school kids and demonstrate how the instrument measures 3D surfaces. We also illustrate the mobile App and computer software associated with the instrument to combine, clean, and export the 3D point cloud data in various formats. The title of the workshop is “One click to measure 3D surface”.
June 17, 2024: Geological Society of America (GSA) offers graduate student Rowann Remie an On To the Future (OTF) travel award to attend the GSA Connects 2024, 22-25 September in Anaheim, California. She will receive a budget of $1300 to attend the conference.
June 4, 2024: Dr. Andy Baker from UNSW Australia is awarded a research grant from the Australian Research Council (ARC) on the topic of climate and groundwater recharge, with a focus on caves and cave stalagmites to understand climate drivers of recharge in both present and future. The project title is “Caves and their stalagmites: linking climate to groundwater recharge” and involves some cave LiDAR work to upscale drip hydrology in various Australian caves. I will be working on the project as an international collaborator over the 5-year project cycle. The proposal is awarded with a budget of AU$3,038,909. Here's the news of the grant award from ARC: https://www.arc.gov.au/2024-laureate-profile-professor-andrew-baker.
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May 18-19, 2024: I organize the third research trip to Natural Bridge Cavern, San Antonio TX with two of the Geosciences students. The students (Rowann and Audrey) and I spend two days at the site to download the drip time series from all 20 automated drip loggers for the entire hydrological year. Moreover, we install an additional 10 loggers to cover the entire Hidden passage of the cavern. We meet with Brian Vauter to discuss the possible interpretation of the 7 months of logger data we have.
May 06, 2024: Rowann Remie receives the AIPG’s Shoemaker award ($2500) for her research and academic excellence. Dr. James Henderson, P.G, C.P.G. District III Representative for the Texas Section of the AIPG comes to MSU to hand over the award to Rowann.
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May 08, 2024: Rowann Remie receives the GSA karst division grant of $1500 to support field trip costs for her research work at Natural Bridge Caverns. I provide her an online recommendation as her primary supervisor. The GSA Karst Division recognizes excellence in scholarship within its membership through this research grant.
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Apr 29-30, 2024: Rowann presents a poster titled “Characterizing Tree Structural Parameters using Terrestrial LiDAR and Geometric Modelling within an Urban University” at the AAPG Southwest Section Meeting in Abilene. She receives the second prize for poster presentation.
Apr 22-25, 2024: Attend the AmericaView Annual Meeting at Blacksburg VA to participate in a constructive discussion on how to progress AmericaView in the future with board members and PIs from all StateViews.​
Apr 21-23, 2024: All 6 graduate students and 3 UG students from the Lab attend the 2024 Joint NC/SC GSA meeting at Springfield MO. I am the co-author of 5 student talks. Zantia King wins the award for the 2024 UG Student Oral Presentation.
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Apr 8-10, 2024: Zantia presents a poster titled “Characterizing Urban Trees and Estimating Above Ground Biomass using Terrestrial LiDAR and Quantitative Structure Models” at the National Conference on Undergraduate Research (NCUR) 2024 in Long Beach, CA. She is part of a group of four students and another four faculty travel from MSU to represent our university.
Feb 06, 2024: Apply to the Spring 2024 Class of Gamma Sigma Theta - The National Honor Society for Geospatial Technology. I submit the application as Faculty Advisor and include 4 students (Elizabeth, Md, Anna, and Mekerie). This is part of GeoTech Center which is a National Science Foundation (NSF) funded project. The GeoTech Center provides professional development opportunities and curriculum resources to secondary, two-year, and four-year educators. My application is accepted by the GeoTech Center. The students receive some benefits (e.g. memberships to professional organizations, free access to GIS and drone-related tests/materials).
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​On Jan 12-15, 2024: Four Geosciences graduate students (Rowann, Elizabeth, Md, and Matthew) and I spend three days at the Natural Bridge Caverns, San Antonio TX to download the drip time series from all 20 automated drip loggers that we installed in our first trip during May 2023. We collect more than 50 LiDAR scans to cover the rest of the Discovery passage section of the cavern. Moreover, we perform additional LiDAR data collection to have coverage of the entire Hidden passage of the cavern site. This data will provide a better characterization of water infiltration pathways and estimation of groundwater recharge in highly heterogeneous Cretaceous limestone aquifer formation.
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​On Jan 3, 2024: Kathryn Brown was awarded the third prize of the Student Award for her poster presentation at AGU 2023. This is an outstanding achievement for Kat and our lab. Congratulation Kat.​
Previous news (2023 and backward)
On Dec 15th, 2023: My graduate student Kathryn Brown presents our poster at AGU 2023 in the session: H51P: Environmental Vadose Zone Hydrology: Physical and Biogeochemical Processes Across Scales. The poster titled “Morphological and Spatial Analysis of Cave LiDAR Remote Sensing to Identify Karst Water Infiltration Pathways”. Another of my graduate students Elizabeth Elkins also attends the conference to have exposure to various research ideas for her master’s thesis project.
On Nov 20th, 2023: All three of my proposal submissions are approved for funding through AmericaView Research and Education Grant (3x$2000). These projects will engage UG / G students in research activities related to remote sensing data during Spring/Summer 2024.
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On Nov 4th, 2023: Elizabeth Elkins presents our work at the virtual Midwest/West Northeast Regional Undergraduate Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity Conference. The presentation is on “Traditional and Remote Sensing-Based Above Ground Biomass Estimate for North Texas Tree Species”.
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On Nov 3rd, 2023: Two of my research students and I were featured in an interview organised by the Undergraduate Research Office at Midwestern State University to discuss our research experience with the EURECA project. This is part of the "I am Undergraduate Research series" that seeks to give the general public at MSU an insight into what research is really like, and what it's about; letting them know that undergraduate students can do research.
On Oct 23th, 2023: AmericaView awarded Midwestern State University $25,500 to carry out its Stateview Program Development and Operations for the state of Texas, also known as “Texasview.” Dr. Rebecca Dodge serves as principal investigator, and Drs. Jonathan Price and Kashif Mahmud are co-PIs. With this funding, we plan to continue and expand the “Texas as Art” initiative, which includes a traveling exhibition of satellite imagery artwork of different ecoregions around the state of Texas. The Texas as Art exhibition demonstrates the applications of satellite imagery across a broad range of challenges that affect Texas’ ecoregions. This funding also supports the development and dissemination of educational and outreach materials for K-12 teachers and students as well as support for undergraduate and graduate student research projects involving applied remote sensing activities.
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On June 12th, 2023: Elizabeth Elkins virtually attends the 2023 ASPRS International Technical Symposium. This conference is sponsored by the American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ASPRS). She presents a poster on “Traditional and Remote Sensing-Based Above Ground Biomass Estimate for North Texas Tree Species” at the virtual event.
On May 15-17th, 2023: Three graduate students (Kat, Rowann, and Elizabeth) and I spend three days at the Natural Bridge Caverns, San Antonio TX to install 20 automated drip loggers at the two largest chambers ‘Hall of the Mountain King’ and ‘Castle of the White Giants’. We also collect more than 60 LiDAR scans to cover this entire section of the cave. We cover more than 700 feet of cave section and a cave ceiling elevation gradient of 75 feet. This project is our first attempt to combine the two emerging techniques of remote sensing LiDAR and automatic drip loggers in Texas caves to better characterize water infiltration pathways and estimate groundwater recharge in highly heterogeneous Cretaceous limestone aquifer formation.
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On April 11th, 2023: Elizabeth Elkins participate in ACU Undergraduate Research, Creativity and Innovation Festival 2023. This festival is sponsored by the Abilene Christian University Office of Undergraduate Research, Creativity and Innovation. She presents a poster on “Terrestrial Remote Sensing Technology for Improved Forest Biomass Monitoring” at the festival.
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On March 31st, 2023: Kathryn Brown and Elizabeth Elkins attend the 23rd Ecological Integration Symposium at Texas A&M University. Elizabeth presents her UG research titled “Characterize urban tree attributes using terrestrial LiDAR and quantitative structure model” at the Symposium.
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On February 25th, 2023: UG student (Elizabeth) and two graduate students (Kat and Rowann) collect LiDAR data for 20 small/large trees within the rectangular block of the Bolin building, MSU Texas campus. They also record geographic coordinates using the high-precision GPS tool (Trimble TDC-150) and measure diameters for those trees. The fieldwork is directly related to the MSU EURECA project, however, it also provides training to the graduate students who will be using the LiDAR instrument in cave sites in the coming semester.
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On January 10th, 2022: My proposal titled “Terrestrial Remote Sensing Technology for Improved Forest Biomass Monitoring” is accepted for MSU Spring 2023 EURECA grant. A geosciences UG student Elizabeth Elkins (EURECA scholar) will work on the research project during Spring 2023 under my supervision.
On November 15th, 2022: Our proposal was awarded for MSU Faculty Intramural Grant 2022. The project will integrate remote sensing and water infiltration data to identify karst subsurface fractures and better quantify groundwater recharge. The project involves fieldwork at Natural Bridge Caverns in Comal County Texas engaging two MSU Geosciences faculty (Dr. Price and Dr. Katumwehe) and two graduate students with the PI (Dr. Mahmud). We believe this study will lay a foundation to calculate groundwater recharge, understand infiltration water movement and discover areas of cavern development.
On September 22nd, 2022: I have been awarded two AmericaView Research and Education Grants for the academic year 2022-23. These grants are funded by the United States Geological Survey (USGS) and support remote sensing research projects for undergraduate/graduate students. One of the projects is related to remote sensing, computation, hydrogeology, and groundwater resources and the other one focuses on the terrestrial carbon cycle, computation, remote sensing, and climate change. My Lab is going to recruit two MSU undergraduate/graduate students from geoscience, environmental science, or computer science to work on these projects. Interested candidates are encouraged to email me for more information about the Research Assistant positions.
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On August 15th, 2022: I join the Kimbell School of Geosciences at Midwestern State University, Texas as an Assistant Professor and start my lab "Remote Sensing and Modeling (RSM)". If you are a student interested in doing undergraduate research or looking for M.Sc. in Geosciences and Environmental Sciences, please visit my page join RSM lab.
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On December 17th, 2021: I co-chaired an oral AGU session - B52C: Past, Present, and Future of Water-Limited Dryland Ecosystems: Local Trends to Global Impacts. The session highlights advances in our understanding of hydrological, biogeochemical, and ecological processes in water-limited environments; investigates the response of dryland ecosystems to changing climate, rising CO2, and different land use and management practices; and provides perspectives on needs and directions for future research and environmental policy-making.
On December 14th, 2021: At 2021 AGU Meeting, I showed data assimilation as a tool to improve terrestrial biosphere model predictions of evapotranspiration and its partitioning. Here are the overview slides and the detailed presentation of the project.
On September 20-22nd, 2021: I attended the 2021 Ameriflux Annual Meeting and presented our work on Modeling semiarid evapotranspiration partitioning at the meeting. The poster can be downloaded from here.
On December 16th, 2020: At 2020 AGU Meeting, I presented a poster in the session B110 - Emergent Behavior in the Terrestrial Carbon Cycle II. Here are the poster and the narration of the work.
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On October 6-8th, 2020: I attended the 2020 Ameriflux Annual Meeting and presented our work on semi-arid ecosystem model optimization at the meeting. I really like the exciting and user-friendly platform "Gather" used in the meeting which offered plenty of opportunity for interactions with academics, scientists and Ameriflux site PIs.
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