Rodrigo Vargas

About

Rodrigo Vargas is a professor at the School of Life Sciences at Arizona State University (ASU), where he leads an interdisciplinary research program focused on ecosystem ecology, environmental data science, and global environmental change. He joined ASU in 2025 from the University of Delaware, where he developed an internationally recognized research program on carbon cycle science. Professor Vargas’s work emphasizes how nature-based solutions can mitigate the impacts of environmental changes across terrestrial and coastal ecosystems. His work integrates measurements, experiments, and numerical tools to refine the understanding of biosphere-atmosphere interactions from local to global scales.

A commitment to leadership, scientific excellence, and social impact defines Professor Vargas’s career. He is a globally recognized expert on soil-plant-atmosphere interactions, developing environmental cyberinfrastructures, and supporting scientific networks. His work has taken him from tropical forests to dry lands and from the coastal ocean to mountains. He has contributed to major national and international assessments, including FAO’s Status of the World’s Soil Resources (2015), Mexican Report on Climate Change  (2015), Second State of the Carbon Cycle Report (SOCCR2; 2018), and the USDA National Climate Change Roadmap (2023). These reports and Vargas’s research contributions have informed decision-support systems and climate policy frameworks across North America.

Professor Vargas is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the Earth Leadership Program, and the Mexican Academy of Sciences. With over 200 contributions to the scientific literature, he is a Highly Cited Researcher and recipient of the Piers J. Sellers Mid-Career Award of the American Geophysical Union (AGU), the Mexican Carbon Program International Award, Fulbright Fellowship, and the Mid-career Faculty Excellence in Scholarship Award from UD. Professor Vargas has a strong commitment to strengthening networks of scientists. He formerly served on the North American Carbon Program (NACP) Science Leadership Group, the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) soil sensor technical working group, and the Atmosphere group of the North American Forestry Commission. He was a member of the U.S. National Committee for Soil Science of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM, 2016-2022).

He currently serves as president-elect of the Biogeosciences Section of AGU and on multiple advisory boards including DOE’s Biological and Environmental Research Advisory Committee (BERAC) and the committee on Science and the Arts in the Earth and Environmental Science Cluster of The Franklin Institute to “recognize those scientists and engineers who lead their fields, expand knowledge, challenge standards, and serve humanity”. He serves on editorial boards of the Journal of Geophysical Research Biogeosciences (JGR-B) and Oecologia.