Water, Agriculture, and Conservation Innovation Lab · UIUC

Tracing water, nutrients, and carbon through working landscapes.

The WACI Lab at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign studies the water, nutrient, and carbon cycles that connect agricultural landscapes to productivity and environmental sustainability, using field and lab measurement, computational modeling, remote sensing, and artificial intelligence.

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100Peer-reviewed papers 7158Total citations 5Courses instructed 27Students & mentees

20+Extension & outreach events annually

What we study

Research questions

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Plant & Soil

Gene to plant scales

How do plant-soil and plant-soil-microbe interactions control productivity, nutrient and carbon cycling under different environmental and management conditions?

Aerial view of a river winding through farm fields

Hydrology & Water Quality

Field to Watershed scales

How do weather variability and human management activities control water, nutrient, and carbon transport from field to watershed scales?

Sustainable Agrifood Systems

Regional to global scales

How can we sustainably manage our landscape for improved production efficiency and environmental quality?

Latest

From the lab

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Aug 2026 Award

Bin Peng receives Conservation Research Award

The Soil and Water Conservation Society recognized Dr. Peng with its Conservation Research Award for contributions to...

Jun 2026 Workshop and conference

ASC hosts the Frontiers of Agricultural Nitrogen Symposium

Dr. Peng joined a panel on agricultural nitrogen measurement at the Beckman Institute symposium.

Apr 2026 Grant

Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant features WACI Lab students Qianyu Zhao and Yuanxin Song

IISG's Grad Student Scholars series profiled Qianyu Zhao and Yuanxin Song for their work tracing and targeting nutrie...

Selected publications

Most-recent publications

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Climate-driven divergence in biophysical and economic impacts of agrivoltaics Jia, M.*, Peng, B.*, Guan, K.*, Lawrence, D.M., DeLucia, E.H., Knapp, A.K., Barron-Gafford, G.A., Khanna, M., Lombardozzi, D.L., Sturchio, M.A., Kannenberg, S.A., Zhao, L., McCall, J., Tang, J., Bernacchi, C.J., Mwebaze, P., Majeed, F., Lee, D., Time, A. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2026

PI corresponding / lead author Land management Earth system

Knowledge-guided graph machine learning for spatially distributed prediction of daily discharge and nitrogen export dynamics Yang, J., Peng, B.*, Wang, Y., Ma, Z., Zhao, Q., Liu, L., Jia, X., Kumar, V., Pan, M., Jia, M., Li, X., Nieber, J., Jin, Z., Guan, K.* Water Research · 2026

PI corresponding / lead author AI Modeling Hydrology Water quality

Assessing the impact of agrivoltaics on water, energy, and carbon cycles using the Community Land Model version 5 Jia, M.*, Peng, B.*, Guan, K.*, Lawrence, D.M., DeLucia, E.H., Lombardozzi, D.L., Sturchio, M.A., Kannenberg, S.A., Knapp, A.K., Du, X., Time, A., Bernacchi, C.J., Lee, D., Miljkovic, N., Branham, B., Khanna, M. Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems · 2026

PI corresponding / lead author Land management Earth system Modeling

Soil oxygen dynamics: a key mediator of tile drainage impacts on coupled hydrological, biogeochemical, and crop systems Ma, Z., Guan, K.*, Peng, B.*, Zhou, W., Grant, R., Tang, J., Sivapalan, M., Pan, M., Li, L., Jin, Z. Hydrology and Earth System Sciences · 2025

PI corresponding / lead author Hydrology Crop and soil Modeling

Detecting the onset of rice field inundation in the Lower Mississippi River Basin via Harmonized Landsat Sentinel-2 (HLS) satellite time series Deng, Y., Peng, B.*, Guan, K.*, Runkle, B., Moreno-García, B., Wu, X., Wang, S., Zhou, Q., Reba, M. ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing · 2025

PI corresponding / lead author Remote sensing Land management Crop and soil Hydrology

Embracing large language model (LLM) technologies in hydrology research Ma, Z., Peng, B.*, Yue, Z., Zeng, H., Pan, M., Wu, X., Yang, J., Mai, L., Guan, K.* Environmental Research: Water · 2025

PI corresponding / lead author Hydrology AI Modeling

A unified framework to reconcile different approaches of modeling transpiration response to water stress: plant hydraulics, supply-demand balance, and empirical soil water stress function Yang, Y., Guan, K.*, Peng, B.*, Feng, X., Xu, X., Pan, M., Sloan, B.P., Zhang, J., Zhou, W., Li, L., Sivapalan, M., Ainsworth, E., Novick, K., Yang, Z., Wang, S. Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems · 2025

PI corresponding / lead author Crop and soil Modeling Earth system

How do Hydrological Variability and Human Activities Control the Spatiotemporal Changes of Riverine Nitrogen Export in the Upper Mississippi River Basin? Zhao, Q., Peng, B.*, Ma, Z., Jia, M., McIsaac, G.F., Robertson, D.M., Saad, D.A., Warner, R.E., Wu, X., Zhou, Q., Guan, K.* Environmental Science & Technology · 2025

PI corresponding / lead author Hydrology Water quality Modeling

Within-field soil moisture variability and temporal stability of agricultural fields in the US Midwest Yang, Y., Peng, B.*, Guan, K.*, Pan, M., Franz, T.E., Cosh, M.H., Bernacchi, C.J. Vadose Zone Journal · 2024

PI corresponding / lead author Hydrology Crop and soil Measurement Remote sensing

We're recruiting postdocs and graduate students.

Five open areas spanning plant-soil and plant-soil-microbe interactions, hydrology and water quality, AI for Science and environmental data science, Earth System Modeling, and Decision Support Systems for digital agriculture and precision conservation.

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