Biography
I am a professor in the Department of Natural Resources and Environmenal Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. I am also a Blue Waters Professor with a joint appointment with the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA). I am a computational environmental scientist studying underlying processes of vegetation-hydrology interactions (i.e. ecohydrology, water-ecosystem-food nexus) for natural and agricultural ecosystems. My current research has a particular emphasis on the impacts of hydro-climate change on vegetation dynamics and crop productivity in tropical and temperate regions.The goal of my research is to increase our society’s resilience and adaptability to maintain sustainability of ecosystem services, food security and water resources under the influence of climate change and anthropogenic drivers (e.g. land use change, increased population and food demands), which directly or indirectly impacts the livelihood and wellbeing of billions of humans.
More information can be found at: http://faculty.nres.illinois.edu/~kaiyuguan/.
I have plans to recruit graduate students and postdocs with full supports in the coming years in the area of "crop remote sensing and modeling." Thus, if you are interested in these opportunities, please contact me with your CV.
Research Description
Dr. Guan provides solutions for real-life problems, such as large-scale crop monitoring and forecasting, water management and sustainability, and global food security. He uses satellite data, computational models, field work, and machine learning approaches to address how climate and human practices affect crop productivity, water resource availability, and ecosystem functioning.
Education
- PhD, Environmental Engineering, Princeton University, 2013
- B.S. Geography, Geoinformatics, Nanjing University, 2008
Additional Campus Affiliations
Office of Research Fellow, College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences
Professor, Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences
Professor, Siebel School of Computing and Data Science
Director, Agroecology Sustainability Center, Institute for Sustainability, Energy, and Environment
Professor, National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA)
Professor, Center for Digital Agriculture, National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA)
Recent Publications
Gao, L., Guan, K., Jiang, C., Lu, X., Wang, S., Ainsworth, E. A., Wu, X., & Chen, M. (2025). Incorporating environmental stress improves estimation of photosynthesis from NIRvP in US Great Plains pasturelands and Midwest croplands. Remote Sensing of Environment, 316, Article 114516. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2024.114516
Kim, N., Jang, C., Yang, W., Guan, K., DeLucia, E. H., & Lee, D. (2025). Spatial variability of agricultural soil carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide fluxes: Characterization and recommendations from spatially high-resolution, multi-year dataset. Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment, 387, Article 109636. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agee.2025.109636
Li, Z., Guan, K., Zhou, W., Peng, B., Nafziger, E. D., Grant, R. F., Jin, Z., Tang, J., Margenot, A. J., Lee, D., Bernacchi, C. J., DeLucia, E. H., Ciampitti, I., Hu, T., Ye, L., Till, J., & Jia, M. (2025). Comparing continuous-corn and soybean-corn rotation cropping systems in the U.S. central Midwest: Trade-offs among crop yield, nutrient losses, and change in soil organic carbon. Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment, 393, Article 109739. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agee.2025.109739
Potash, E., Bradford, M. A., Oldfield, E. E., & Guan, K. (2025). Measure-and-remeasure as an economically feasible approach to crediting soil organic carbon at scale. Environmental Research Letters, 20(2), Article 024025. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ada16c
Qin, R., Guan, K., Peng, B., Zhang, F., Zhou, W., Tang, J., Hu, T., Grant, R., Runkle, B. R. K., Reba, M., & Wu, X. (2025). A model-data fusion approach for quantifying the carbon budget in cotton agroecosystems across the United States. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, 363, Article 110407. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agrformet.2025.110407
