01
Nutrient pollution & management
Agricultural nitrogen and phosphorus pollution, nutrient budgets, nitrogen-use efficiency, surplus indicators and environmental thresholds.
Dr. · Earth Sciences
Shekhar Sharan Goyal
Research Scientist · Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research – UFZ
Leipzig, Germany
Research profile
Environmental systems science across agriculture, food trade, nutrients and water.
I develop spatial and network-based models to quantify how agriculture, food trade and water-resource use redistribute nutrient pollution and sustainability risks across regions.
Research fingerprint
Core topics across my work
The recurring themes connecting my research on agricultural sustainability, environmental risk and water systems.
Agricultural nitrogenPhosphorus pollutionNutrient budgetsNitrogen-use efficiencyFood-system sustainabilityCrop-trade networksEnvironmental footprintsPlanetary boundariesEcohydrologyWater qualityBlue-water stressStream temperatureClimate adaptationGeospatial modellingRemote sensingAI-ready benchmarks
Core research areas
Four connected research directions
02
Food systems, trade & boundaries
Crop-trade networks, environmental footprints, food-system sustainability and planetary-boundary-relevant assessment.
03
Ecohydrology & water systems
Water-quality modelling, blue-water stress, stream-temperature dynamics, hydrological forecasting and climate adaptation.
04
Geospatial & AI-ready data
Remote-sensing-informed datasets, spatial models, reproducible workflows and environmental sustainability benchmarks for AI evaluation.
Selected research output
Recent publications
2026
Quantifying environmental co-benefits of nitrogen-based crop restructuring and its implications on India’s interstate trade network
Published · Open access ↗2026
Rising Disparity in Sustainable Nitrogen Management Across Indian Croplands
Accepted2024
Article2024
Assessing Temporal Dynamics of Nitrogen Surplus in Indian Agriculture: District-Scale Data from 1966 to 2017
Open access ↗Research network
Collaborations & research connections
An interactive view based on co-authored publications and manuscripts, conference work, and active research-team relationships listed in my current academic CV.
Connected research across themes
Click a node to see the relationship and shared research area. Publication collaborators and team/mentoring links are deliberately shown with different edge styles.
Research collaborationTeam / mentoring
Open network explorer →Visual research
Research through figures
Selected figures retained from the original website. Click any figure to inspect it at full size.
Funded leadership
Current projects
UNLOCK · AI Sustainability Benchmarking
Helmholtz-funded project developing AI-ready environmental sustainability benchmarking datasets from Helmholtz data assets.
OCPC · Bilateral Collaboration
Co-supervision of a PhD project on multi-pollutant, spatially explicit water-quality modelling from historical evolution to future scenarios.
In4Nile · Nile River Basin
Co-supervision of a PhD project developing multi-pollutant, spatially explicit water-quality information across the Nile basin.
Data & tools
Open, interactive and reusable research
Indian district nitrogen surplus
Explore annual district patterns and click individual districts to inspect nitrogen-surplus trajectories from 1966 to 2017.
District-scale nitrogen budgets
Supporting CSV and GeoJSON files from the original website remain available for transparent reuse and exploration.
ENMI Europe dataset
Long-term environmental nitrogen management indicators across Europe, developed with collaborators at UFZ and Wageningen.
Activities & engagement
Science beyond papers
EGU OSPP Award ↗
Outstanding Student and PhD Candidate Presentation Award, European Geosciences Union (EGU).
EGU Session Convenership
Convener at EGU 2025 and 2026 on infrastructure resilience, interdependent risks and extreme-weather impacts on networked systems.
Peer review
Reviewer for Nature Sustainability, Scientific Reports, Earth’s Future, and Communications Earth & Environment.