Personal profile
Personal profile
Dr. Sivapalan's research has focused on making predictions in ungauged basins, increasingly in the context of human-induced environmental changes. A basic aim of his research has been to understand observed space-time variability of rainfall-runoff processes at a wide range of scales, including their extremes, and to interpret these in terms of underlying climate-soil-vegetation-topography interactions. Increased focus on hydrologic change has led him to launch the new sub-field of socio-hydrology that aims to explore the dynamic feedbacks between social and hydrological systems lying at the heart of the many critically important water management challenges. Dr. Sivapalan is especially keen towards ensuring that advances in predictions based on socio-hydrologic understanding are used to address acute water management challenges in developing countries where resources are scarce and social and environmental vulnerabilities are intertwined. He has led major efforts towards developing an international network of scientists to address critical water management challenges in the emergent Anthropocene.
Teaching
Education
- Ph.D., Civil Engineering, Princeton University
- M.A., Civil Engineering, Princeton University
- M.Eng., Water Resources Engineering, Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand
- B.S., Civil Engineering, University of Ceylon, Sri Lanka
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Collaborations and top research areas from the last five years
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Critical pathways of coupled human–water systems for understanding unintended consequences of human interventions
Tian, F., Lyu, H., Mijic, A., Wei, J., Liu, L., Blöschl, G. & Sivapalan, M., 2026, In: Hydrological Sciences Journal. 71, 4, p. 732-746 15 p.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Open Access -
Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) for Scaling: An Application for Deducing Hydrologic Connectivity at Watershed Scale
Ye, S., Li, J., Chai, Y., Liu, L., Sivapalan, M., Ran, Q. & Tang, H., May 2026, In: Hydrological Processes. 40, 5, e70559.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
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Advancing water security in semi-arid Brazil: expansion of water storage infrastructure and human-water system co-evolution
Pereira, B., Medeiros, P., Meira Neto, A. A., de Araújo, J. C. & Sivapalan, M., 2025, In: Frontiers in Water. 7, 1602146.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Open Access -
Agricultural human-water systems
Medeiros, P., Chen, X., Cudennec, C., Ghoreishi, M., Gunda, T., Liu, S., Marston, L., O'Keeffe, J., González Piedra, J. I., Roobavannan, M., Sivapalan, M., van Oel, P., Vico, G., Yang, Y. C. E. & Zipper, S., Jan 1 2025, Coevolution and Prediction of Coupled Human-Water Systems: A Sociohydrologic Synthesis of Change in Hydrology and Society. Elsevier, p. 321-388 68 p.Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter
Open Access -
An upscaling approach for estimating field-level irrigation water use through the Budyko framework
Zhang, J., Guan, K., Sivapalan, M., Jiang, C., Pan, M., Peng, B., Zhou, W., Franz, T. E., Chen, X., Lin, K. & Li, Z., Nov 2025, In: Journal of Hydrology. 661, 133785.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review