Muhammad Cheema is a non-resident fellow in the Environmental Security Program at Stimson and an Assistant Professor in the Irrigation and Drainage Department at the University of Agriculture, Faisalabad-Pakistan. He is a remote sensing expert and has experience using multi-sensor satellite data to manage water resources in data-scarce river basins. He has a special focus on developing methodologies to efficiently utilize satellite measurements for hydrology and to model conjunctive water-use in the transboundary Indus River Basin.
Dr. Cheema has published peer-reviewed journal articles on emerging water resource issues in the transboundary Indus Basin. He has also delivered lectures on the use of remote sensing for water management at various universities in Pakistan and abroad. He is currently running a number of internationally funded projects on water and agriculture, and is involved in the establishment of a Chair on Precision Agriculture at the Center of Advanced Studies in Agriculture and Food Security. Before joining the Agricultural University in 2007, Cheema served as an Agricultural Engineer in the Pakistan Agricultural Research Council, Islamabad.
Cheema holds a B.Sc. and M.Sc. (Hons) in Agricultural Engineering from the University of Agriculture, Faisalabad-Pakistan, and did his Ph.D in Civil Engineering and Geo-Sciences at the University of Technology, Delft, the Netherlands.
Selected Publications
- Cheema, M.J.M., W.W. Immerzeel and W.G.M. Bastiaanssen (2014). Spatial quantification of groundwater abstraction in the irrigated Indus Basin. Groundwater, 52(1), 25-36.
- Kiptala, J., Y. Mohamed, M. Mul, M.J.M. Cheema and P. van der Zaag (2013). Land use and land cover classification using phenological variability from MODIS vegetation in the Upper Pangani River Basin, Eastern Africa. J. Phys. Chem. Earth. http: /dx.doi.org/ 10.1016/ j.pce.2013.08.002.
- P. Karimi, W. G. M. Bastiaanssen, D. Molden and M.J.M. Cheema (2013). Basin-wide water accounting using remote sensing data: the case of transboundary Indus Basin. Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, 17, 2473–2486.
- Cheema, M.J.M. and W.G.M. Bastiaanssen (2012). Local calibration of remotely sensed rainfall from the TRMM satellite for different periods and spatial scales in the Indus Basin. International Journal of Remote Sensing, 33, 2603-2627.
- Bastiaanssen, W.G.M., M.J.M. Cheema, W.W. Immerzeel, I.J. Miltenburg and H. Pelgrum (2012). The surface energy balance and actual evapotranspiration of the transboundary Indus Basin estimated from satellite measurements and the ETLook model. Water Resources Research, 48, W11512, doi:10.1029/2011WR010482.
- Cheema, M.J.M., W.G.M. Bastiaanssen, and M.M. Rutten (2011). Validation of surface soil moisture from AMSR-E using auxiliary spatial data in the transboundary Indus Basin. Journal of Hydrology, 405(1/2), 137-149.
- Cheema, M.J.M. and W.G.M. Bastiaanssen (2010). Land use and land cover classification in the irrigated Indus Basin using growth phenology information from satellite data to support water management analysis. Agricultural Water Management, 97(10), 1541-1552.