WAVES Lab at the AGU Fall Meeting 2026

The WAVES Lab and our collaborators will be at the AGU Fall Meeting in San Francisco the week of 7 December. This year the group is on 18 abstracts, ten oral presentations and eight posters, covering irrigation and food security in Africa, tree water use and sap flow, river and wetland dynamics, and soil moisture and evapotranspiration measured from sensors and satellites.

Tuesday morning is the busiest stretch. Cella Schnabel and Anna Boser give back-to-back talks in session GC21A on commercial irrigation across sub-Saharan Africa and small-scale irrigation in Zambia. Huck Rees follows with a 41-year satellite record of the Okavango Delta’s flood pulse, and Kelly opens session H22K with an invited talk on scaling water, energy, and carbon fluxes. Huck presents again on Wednesday afternoon, this time on how long floodplain sediment stays in storage along alluvial rivers.

On the posters, Emma Rigatti starts the week on Monday morning with work on how canopy architecture shapes seasonal water use in coast live oak, and Ryoko Araki closes it on Thursday afternoon with a comparison of soil moisture drydowns seen by in-situ sensors and by satellites. Zoe Sims presents a global meta-analysis of corn intercropping on Wednesday morning.

All times are Pacific, and all rooms are in the Moscone Center. Poster numbers will be added once AGU assigns them.

Monday, 7 December

• Emma Rigatti, Anna Trugman, Kelly Caylor and Shadman Amin. Canopy Architecture Drives Divergent Seasonal Water-Use Strategies in Coast Live Oak. Poster, 08:30–12:00, Moscone South Poster Hall.
• Annette Hilton, Anna Boser, Yibo Liang, Luma Braconi Lazarini, Henderson Vo, Naomi Tague, Arturo Keller and Kelly Caylor. 170 Years of Restored Water Data in California. H11B-09, Oral, 09:50–10:00, Moscone West 2000.
• Pratyush Tripathy, Kathy Baylis, Zachary Scholnick, Kelly Caylor and Robert Heilmayr. How Floods Affect Crop Productivity in the Indo-Gangetic Plains. GC12C-07, Oral, 11:42–11:54, Moscone West 2010.
• Edisson Quichimbo, Mark Cuthbert, Kelly Caylor, Chris Funk, Shraddhanand Shukla, Katerina Michaelides and Michael Singer. Continental-scale Assessment of Groundwater Recharge Across Africa Using a 1-km Process-based Hydrological Model. H14C-07, Oral, 17:21–17:32, Moscone West 3016.

Tuesday, 8 December

• Cella Schnabel, Anna Boser, Emily Miller, Ashley Larsen, Kyle Frankel Davis and Kelly Caylor. Drought Sensitivity of Commercial Irrigation in Sub-Saharan Africa. GC21A-02, Oral, 08:42–08:54, Moscone West 2010.
• Anna Boser, Jackson Coldiron, Karena Lai, Jasper Luo, Madhav Rao, Tamma Carleton and Kelly Caylor. Satellite Machine Learning Reveals Widespread and Growing Small-scale Irrigation in Zambia. GC21A-03, Oral, 08:54–09:06, Moscone West 2010.
• Huck Rees, Mauro Lourenço, Lukas WinklerPrins, Laurel Larsen, Kelly Caylor and Vamsi Ganti. A 41-year satellite record reveals abrupt redistribution of the Okavango Delta’s flood pulse since 2012. EP21B-05, Oral, 09:10–09:18, Moscone West 2001.
• Kelly Caylor, Shadman Amin and Anna Trugman. Scaling Water–Energy–Carbon Fluxes as an Information Problem. H22K-01, Invited oral, 10:35–10:46, Moscone West 3003.
• Cella Schnabel, Mason Cao, Evan Patrick, Nickolas McManus, Joana Krieger, Patrick Roehrdanz, Ashley Larsen and Kelly Caylor. Rainfall Variability Shapes the Yield Benefits of Agroforestry. Poster, 14:15–17:45, Moscone South Poster Hall.

Wednesday, 9 December

• Zoe Sims, Kelly Caylor, Tamma Carleton and David Tilman. Corn-Soy and Corn-Wheat Intercropping Improves Land- and Nitrogen-Use Efficiencies Across Both Low- and High-Intensity Agriculture: A Global Meta-Analysis. GC31D-07, Oral, 09:24–09:33, Moscone West 2010.
• Shraddhanand Shukla, Narjes Mathlouthi, Frank Davenport, Kelly Caylor, Zoe Pierrat, Gregory Husak, Michael Budde and Karyn Tabor. Enabling EO-driven agricultural monitoring and food insecurity early warning through CHC’s Agriculture Prediction Environment (CAPE). GC32C-01, Oral, 10:30–10:45, Moscone West 2010.
• Trent Biggs, Camila Abe, Gutieres Camatta Barbino, Nara Luisa Reis de Andrade, João Gilberto de Souza Ribeiro, Rodrigo Martins Moreira, Dar Roberts and Kelly Caylor. Responses of small streams and pasture grasses to extreme drought in the southwestern Brazilian Amazon Basin. Poster, 14:15–17:45, Moscone South Poster Hall.
• Michael Burnett, Rayna Ruggeri, Kelly Caylor, Hillary Young and Leander Anderegg. Estimating whole-tree sap flow in buttressed and irregular trunks. Poster, 14:15–17:45, Moscone South Poster Hall.
• Cooper Ramey, Andrew Spott, Kelly Caylor and Alexandra Atlee Phillips. An AI Workflow for Automating Analysis of Regulations.gov Public Comments. Poster, 14:15–17:45, Moscone South Poster Hall.
• Huck Rees, Vamsi Ganti, Evan Greenberg, Gen Li and Kelly Caylor. Channel slope and planform set the storage duration of floodplain sediment in alluvial river corridors. EP33A-04, Oral, 15:00–15:13, Moscone West 2001.

Thursday, 10 December

• Michael Burnett, Thomas Dudley, Kelly Caylor, Hillary Young and Leander Anderegg. Building Low-cost Sap Flow Sensors and Data Loggers for Ecohydrology: Two Case Studies in Feasibility. Poster, 08:30–12:00, Moscone South Poster Hall.
• Ryoko Araki, Kelly Caylor, Bryn Morgan, Trent Biggs, Naomi Tague, Jonathan Frame and Hilary McMillan. Nonlinear Soil Moisture Drydown and Its Spatial Heterogeneity Captured by In-Situ Sensors versus Satellite Observation. Poster, 14:15–17:45, Moscone South Poster Hall.
• Shadman Amin, Anna Trugman and Kelly Caylor. How Does Ecosystem Heterogeneity Influence Our Ability to Estimate ET and What Does this Mean for Diagnosing Drought Stress Using OpenET Products. Poster, 14:15–17:45, Moscone South Poster Hall.

See all of the lab’s AGU26 abstracts →