Kaiyu Guan

About

Kaiyu Guan is a Levenick Endowed Professor in agroecosystem sensing and modeling at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). He is also a Blue-Waters Professor in Supercomputing at UIUC-NCSA, a University Scholar of the UIUC System, the Founding Director of the Agroecosystem Sustainability Center (ASC) at UIUC, and the Chief Scientist of the NASA Acres Consortium, representing NASA's flagship program in advancing US agriculture research. His major affiliations at UIUC include the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences (NRES), the Siebel School of Computing and Data Sciences (CS), the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences (ACES), the Institute for Sustainability, Energy, and Environment (iSEE), and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA). His research group employs advanced process models, satellite sensing technology, fieldwork, and artificial intelligence to investigate how climate and human practices influence crop productivity, water resources, ecosystem functioning, and environmental sustainability. His work focuses on applying these insights to real-world problems such as large-scale crop monitoring and forecasting, quantification of environmental impacts of farming and grazing, agricultural policy design, water management, sustainability, and global food security. Guan has held positions including full professor at UIUC since 2024, associate professor from 2021 to 2024, and assistant professor…

Research topics

• Environmental science
• Ecology
• Computer Science
• Geography
• Agronomy
• Agroforestry
• Biology
• Environmental resource management
• Economics
• Soil science

Selected publications

• Do cover crops benefit soil microbiome? A meta-analysis of current research

  Soil Biology and Biochemistry · 2020 · 453 citations

  Cover cropping is a promising sustainable agricultural method with the potential to enhance soil health and mitigate consequences of soil degradation. Because cover cropping can form an agroecosystem distinct from that of bare fallow, the soil microbiome is hypothesized to respond to the altered environmental circumstances. Despite the growing number of primary literature sources investigating the relationship between cover cropping and the soil microbiome, there has not been a quantitative rese…

  DOI

• Towards a multiscale crop modelling framework for climate change adaptation assessment

  Nature Plants · 2020 · 309 citations

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• Using soil library hyperspectral reflectance and machine learning to predict soil organic carbon: Assessing potential of airborne and spaceborne optical soil sensing

  Remote Sensing of Environment · 2022 · 217 citations

  DOI

• From the Ground to Space: Using Solar‐Induced Chlorophyll Fluorescence to Estimate Crop Productivity

  Geophysical Research Letters · 2020 · 162 citations

  Abstract Timely and accurate monitoring of crops is essential for food security. Here, we examine how well solar‐induced chlorophyll fluorescence (SIF) can inform crop productivity across the United States. Based on tower‐level observations and process‐based modeling, we find highly linear gross primary production (GPP):SIF relationships for C4 crops, while C3 crops show some saturation of GPP at high light when SIF continues to increase. C4 crops yield higher GPP:SIF ratios (30–50%) primarily b…

  DOI

• Assessing the benefit of satellite-based Solar-Induced Chlorophyll Fluorescence in crop yield prediction

  International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation · 2020 · 158 citations

  Large-scale crop yield prediction is critical for early warning of food insecurity, agricultural supply chain management, and economic market. Satellite-based Solar-Induced Chlorophyll Fluorescence (SIF) products have revealed hot spots of photosynthesis over global croplands, such as in the U.S. Midwest. However, to what extent these satellite-based SIF products can enhance the performance of crop yield prediction when benchmarking against other existing satellite data remains unclear. Here we…

  DOI

Recent grants

• CAREER: Ensuring Co-Sustainability of Food Production and Environmental Quality in the U.S. Midwest Agroecosystems

  NSF · $510k · 2019–2026

Frequent coauthors

• Bin Peng

  351 shared

• Carl J. Bernacchi

  University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

  146 shared

• Chongya Jiang

  131 shared

• Wang Zhou

  Sun Yat-sen University

  108 shared

• Sheng Wang

  Northeastern University

  95 shared

• Elizabeth A. Ainsworth

  87 shared

• Hyungsuk Kimm

  Seoul National University

  76 shared

• Ming Pan

  73 shared

Labs

• Siebel School of Computing and Data SciencePI

Education

• Ph.D., Computer Science

  University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

  2007

• M.S., Computer Science

  University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

  2003

• B.S., Computer Science

  University of Science and Technology of China

  2001

Awards & honors

• National winner of the agInnovation Research Innovation Awar…
• Blavatnik National Awards for Young Scientist Finalist (2025…
• Levenick Endowed Professorship (2025)
• Clarivate Analytics Highly Cited Researchers list (2024)
• Blavatnik National Awards for Young Scientist Finalist (2024…

Similar researchers at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

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• ChengXiang Zhaih-83
• Jimeng Sunh-82