
Kelly Caylor
Professor
Associate Vice Chancellor for Innovation, Professor at Bren School & Geography.
Biography
Kelly Caylor is the Associate Vice Chancellor for Innovation in the Office of Research and holds joint appointments at the Bren School and the Department of Geography. In his scholarship, Professor Caylor seeks to develop improved insight into the way that land use and climate change are interacting to affect the dynamics and resilience of global drylands. His primary research sites are in sub-Saharan Africa and the US Southwest, where he is focused on understanding the vulnerability of both managed and unmanaged ecosystems to current and future changes in hydrological dynamics. Professor Caylor conducts research at a number of spatial and temporal scales; from small-scale experiments during individual rainfall events all the way up to continental-scale analyses of climate trends. A major focus of his research is the development of new methods to improve the measurement and prediction of ecosystem water-use efficiency and novel observation networks for the characterization of coupled natural-human system dynamics. He is co-founder of Arable Labs, Inc (www.arable.com). Professor Caylor is the Editor in Chief of the AGU journal, Earth's Future, and has previously served on the editorial boards of Water Resources Research, the Journal of Geophysical Research — Biogeosciences, Vadose Zone Journal, and the Environmental Research Reviews section of Environmental Research Letters. He was a recipient of an Early Career Award from the NSF and was the inaugural recipient of the Early Career Award in Hydrological Sciences given by the American Geophysical Union (AGU).
Recent Publications
Han Chen, Stephen Good, E. Zahn, E. Bou-Zeid, Kelly Caylor, R.P. Fiorella, M. Haagsma, Lixin Wang
Earth's Future · 2026
Han Chen, Stephen Good, Kelly Caylor, R. Fiorella, Lixin Wang
Journal of Hydrology · 2026
Bryn Morgan, A.T. Trugman, Kelly Caylor
Agricultural & Forest Meteorology · 2026
K. Baylis, E. C. Lentz, Kelly Caylor, M. Gu, C. Gunderson, T. Haigh, M. Hayes, H. Lahr, D. Maxwell, C. Funk
Earth's Future · 2025
Bryn Morgan, Ryoko Araki, A. Trugman, Kelly Caylor
Nature Ecology & Evolution · 2025
Recent News
Research led by PhD student Bryn Morgan reveals that grasslands use water aggressively until it's gone, while forests cut back early to avoid disaster.
PhD student Ryoko Araki developed a nonlinear model that captures how plants dynamically respond to water stress—revealing whether ecosystems are water spenders or water savers.
PhD student Anna Boser was awarded the 2024 AGU Science for Solutions Award, which recognizes significant contributions in applying Earth and space science to solve societal problems.
Education
BA in Environmental Sciences
University of Virginia
1997
PhD in Environmental Sciences
University of Virginia
2003
Quick Info
- Status
- Current Member