World's Best Scientists 2026 revealed!

D-Index & Metrics

Earth Science

D-Index
88
Citations
27428
World Ranking
311
National Ranking
162

Research.com Recognitions

  • 2001 - Member of the National Academy of Engineering For innovation in hydrological forecasting and hydrometeorology through application of new technology, probability, and statistics, and for the advancement of civil engineering education.
  • 1982 - Fellow of American Geophysical Union (AGU)
  • 1982 - Fellow of John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation

Overview

Rafael L. Bras is affiliated with the Georgia Institute of Technology in the United States. Their research primarily focuses on environmental science, with a significant emphasis on subfields including global and planetary change, atmospheric science, environmental engineering, civil and structural engineering, and nature and landscape conservation.

The scientist's work covers a range of topics related to soil moisture and remote sensing, soil and unsaturated flow, landslides and related hazards, plant water relations and carbon dynamics, forest ecology and management, tree root and stability studies, and meteorological phenomena and simulations.

Frequent coauthors collaborating with Rafael L. Bras include Jiaying Zhang, Tamara Heartsill Scalley, Mehmet Evren Soylu, Elisa Arnone, and Leonardo Noto.

Notable recent papers authored or coauthored by this researcher include:

  • Breaking Down the Computational Barriers to Real-Time Urban Flood Forecasting, 2021, Geophysical Research Letters
  • Detecting Shallow Groundwater From Spaceborne Soil Moisture Observations, 2020, Water Resources Research
  • Global Shallow Groundwater Patterns From Soil Moisture Satellite Retrievals, 2021, IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing
  • Forest Structure and Composition Are Critical to Hurricane Mortality, 2022, Forests
  • Implications of terrain resolution on modeling rainfall-triggered landslides using a TIN-based model, 2021, Environmental Modelling & Software

The research has been published in several venues repeatedly, including:

  • Geophysical Research Letters
  • Forests
  • Forest Service Research Data Archive
  • Soil Erosion Research Under a Changing Climate, January 8-13, 2023, Aguadilla, Puerto Rico, USA
  • IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing

Their contributions are recognized through awards such as membership in the National Academy of Engineering since 2001 for innovation in hydrological forecasting and hydrometeorology, fellowship in the American Geophysical Union since 1982, and fellowship of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation since 1982.

Best Publications

  • On the extraction of channel networks from digital elevation data

    David G. Tarboton;Rafael L. Bras;Ignacio Rodriguez-Iturbe

  • Random Functions and Hydrology

    Rafael L. Bras;Ignacio Rodríguez-Iturbe

  • Hydrology: An Introduction to Hydrologic Science

    Rafael L. Bras

  • Hillslope processes, drainage density, and landscape morphology

    Gregory E. Tucker;Rafael L. Bras

  • A coupled channel network growth and hillslope evolution model: 1. Theory

    Garry Willgoose;Rafael L. Bras;Ignacio Rodriguez-Iturbe

  • The fractal nature of river networks

    David G. Tarboton;Rafael L. Bras;Ignacio Rodriguez-Iturbe

  • Precipitation recycling in the Amazon basin

    E. A. B. Eltahir;R. L. Bras

  • Energy dissipation, runoff production, and the three-dimensional structure of river basins

    Ignacio Rodríguez-Iturbe;Andrea Rinaldo;Riccardo Rigon;Rafael L. Bras

  • Real‐time forecasting with a conceptual hydrologic model: 2. Applications and results

    Peter K. Kitanidis;Rafael L. Bras

  • A comparison of seven geostatistically based inverse approaches to estimate transmissivities for modeling advective transport by groundwater flow

    D. A. Zimmerman;G. de Marsily;G. de Marsily;C. A. Gotway;M. G. Marietta

  • Catchment hydrologic response with a fully distributed triangulated irregular network model

    Valeriy Y. Ivanov;Enrique R. Vivoni;Rafael L. Bras;Dara Entekhabi

  • A stochastic approach to modeling the role of rainfall variability in drainage basin evolution

    Gregory E. Tucker;Rafael L. Bras

  • An object-oriented framework for distributed hydrologic and geomorphic modeling using triangulated irregular networks

    Gregory E. Tucker;Stephen T. Lancaster;Nicole M. Gasparini;Rafael L. Bras

  • A Physical Basis for Drainage Density

    David G. Tarboton;Rafael L. Bras;Ignacio Rodriguez-Iturbe

  • Self-organized fractal river networks.

    A. Rinaldo;I. Rodrigueziturbe;R. Rigon;E. Ijjaszvasquez

  • An Agenda for Land-Surface Hydrology Research and a Call for the Second International Hydrological Decade

    Dara Entekhabi;Ghassem R. Asrar;Alan K. Betts;Keith J. Beven

  • The Channel-Hillslope Integrated Landscape Development Model (CHILD)

    Gregory Tucker;Stephen Lancaster;Nicole Gasparini;Rafael Bras

  • Statistical analysis of drainage density from digital terrain data

    Gregory E Tucker;Filippo Catani;Andrea Rinaldo;Rafael L Bras

  • Optimal Channel Networks - a Framework for the Study of River Basin Morphology

    Riccardo Rigon;Andrea Rinaldo;Ignacio Rodriguez-Iturbe;Rafael L. Bras

  • Minimum energy and fractal structures of drainage networks

    Andrea Rinaldo;Ignacio Rodriguez-Iturbe;Riccardo Rigon;Rafael L. Bras

  • Real‐time forecasting with a conceptual hydrologic model: 1. Analysis of uncertainty

    Peter K. Kitanidis;Rafael L. Bras

Frequent Co-Authors

Ignacio Rodriguez-Iturbe
Ignacio Rodriguez-Iturbe Texas A&M University
Enrique R. Vivoni
Enrique R. Vivoni Arizona State University
Valeriy Y. Ivanov
Valeriy Y. Ivanov University of Michigan–Ann Arbor
Erkan Istanbulluoglu
Erkan Istanbulluoglu University of Washington
Gregory E. Tucker
Gregory E. Tucker University of Colorado Boulder
David G. Tarboton
David G. Tarboton Utah State University
Marcos Longo
Marcos Longo Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Ke Zhang
Ke Zhang Hohai University

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