Cayelan Carey
· ProfessorVirginia Tech · Biology
Active 2002–2026
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About
Cayelan Carey is a professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Virginia Tech and serves as Co-Director of the Center for Ecosystem Forecasting. Her work lies at the intersection of freshwater ecosystem science and data science, with a focus on nutrient and carbon cycling in freshwater ecosystems and the feedbacks between aquatic biogeochemical cycles and plankton food webs. She is particularly interested in exploring anthropogenic effects on inland waters and how local communities value and manage water resources, which has implications for water quality. At Virginia Tech, her research has expanded into near-term ecological forecasting, where she collaborates with computer scientists, environmental engineers, decision scientists, and water utilities to integrate high-frequency sensor data and ecosystem models. Her lab group generates daily water quality forecasts to predict freshwater ecosystem services for lakes and reservoirs across the U.S., studying how managers use these forecasts to control hypoxia and algal blooms, thereby influencing biogeochemical cycling and greenhouse gas dynamics. She is also dedicated to advancing undergraduate training in environmental data science through the NSF-supported Macrosystems EDDIE program, which develops teaching modules that incorporate high-frequency sensor datasets into ecology curricula to enhance students' ecological understanding and quantitative skills.
Research topics
- Environmental science
- Ecology
- Geology
- Oceanography
- Biology
- Computer Science
- Atmospheric sciences
- Meteorology
- Botany
- Physics
Selected publications
Storm impacts on phytoplankton community dynamics in lakes
Global Change Biology · 2020 · 280 citations
In many regions across the globe, extreme weather events such as storms have increased in frequency, intensity, and duration due to climate change. Ecological theory predicts that such extreme events should have large impacts on ecosystem structure and function. High winds and precipitation associated with storms can affect lakes via short-term runoff events from watersheds and physical mixing of the water column. In addition, lakes connected to rivers and streams will also experience flushing d…
Limnology and Oceanography · 2021 · 159 citations
Abstract To determine the drivers of phytoplankton biomass, we collected standardized morphometric, physical, and biological data in 230 lakes across the Mediterranean, Continental, and Boreal climatic zones of the European continent. Multilinear regression models tested on this snapshot of mostly eutrophic lakes (median total phosphorus [TP] = 0.06 and total nitrogen [TN] = 0.7 mg L −1 ), and its subsets (2 depth types and 3 climatic zones), show that light climate and stratification strength w…
A system of metrics for the assessment and improvement of aquatic ecosystem models
Environmental Modelling & Software · 2020 · 143 citations
In this paper, we introduce the CSPS framework for the hierarchical assessment of aquatic ecosystem models built on a range of metrics and characteristic signatures relevant to aquatic ecosystem condition. The framework is comprised of four levels: 0) conceptual validation; 1) comparison of simulated state variables with observations (‘state validation’); 2) comparison of fluxes with measured process rates (‘process validation’); and 3) assessment of system-level emergent properties, patterns an…
Hydrology and earth system sciences · 2021 · 120 citations
Abstract. The concentration of oxygen is fundamental to lake water quality and ecosystem functioning through its control over habitat availability for organisms, redox reactions, and recycling of organic material. In many eutrophic lakes, oxygen depletion in the bottom layer (hypolimnion) occurs annually during summer stratification. The temporal and spatial extent of summer hypolimnetic anoxia is determined by interactions between the lake and its external drivers (e.g., catchment characteristi…
Journal of Geophysical Research Biogeosciences · 2020 · 56 citations
Senior authorCorrespondingKey Points CH 4 ebullition rates decreased by 98% and CH 4 diffusion decreased by 32% on a longitudinal gradient from reservoir inflow to dam Ebullition was driven by physical variables upstream and phytoplankton downstream; diffusion was most related to phytoplankton Despite large variation in CH 4 emissions longitudinally, time series models well captured the dynamics of emissions from a small reservoir
Recent grants
NSF · $846k · 2018–2024
NSF · $450k · 2024–2028
NSF · $720k · 2020–2024
Frequent coauthors
- 100 shared
Caryn C. Vaughn
Oklahoma Biological Survey
- 100 shared
Peter B. McIntyre
- 100 shared
Carla L. Atkinson
University of Alabama
- 100 shared
Amanda T. Rugenski
- 100 shared
Colden V. Baxter
Idaho State University
- 100 shared
Weston H. Nowlin
- 100 shared
Kate S. Boersma
- 100 shared
Krista A. Capps
Savannah River National Laboratory
Labs
Education
Ph.D., Ecology & Evolutionary Biology
Cornell University
Awards & honors
- 2024 Robert and Maude Gledden Visiting Fellowship, Universit…
- 2024 Outstanding Faculty Service Award, Department of Biolog…
- 2023 SORTEE Open Science Researcher Award Finalist
- 2022 Earth Leadership Fellowship, Future Earth and Stanford…
- 2022 Fulbright Future Fellowship, Australian-U.S. Fulbright…
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