Research

My research touches broadly on several themes related to the human dimensions of landscape change: sustainable food systems, climate risk, adaptation, and resilience in cities, City-University Partnerships (CUPs), and local tensions in implementing Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). My work has been mostly driven by my interest in agricultural persistence and abandonment, particularly focused on producers in and around cities and in tropical grasslands, their decisions to keep producing food, and how they go about it in the face of urban growth and livelihood diversification.  I have explored this question in and around Mexico City/central Mexico (peri-urban agriculture), and Colombia and Ecuador (sustainable cattle ranching). I am now expanding my research area to include San Diego and the opportunities for food sustainability and sovereignty in the region. 

During my first faculty position at UNAM (Mexico), my research evolved to assess how households and individuals adapt to climate and water stress in Mexico City, a place known for its ironic challenges of both too much and too little water (often at the same time and in the same place). I collaborated with the Megadapt project at ASU-UNAM, which spurred my interest in why and how households adapt to environmental stress, particularly in informal settlements (and also inspired by the Xochimilco Wetland and the NGO REDES). An outgrowth of that work has been my increased interest in Green Infrastructure implementation, particularly in peripheral and informal areas in Mexico (inspired by NGO Isla Urbana). Additionally, I became interested in the manifestation of urban resilience planning in Mexico City through their adoption of a Resilience Plan in 2016, and how the concept gets operationalized. I collaborated for many years with the Mexico City Resilience Office, including the facilitation of many workshops addressing local capacity for risk management in the face of extreme events. My collaborative work with the Mexico City government led to my participation in a group of scholars interested in City-University Partnerships (CUP), including colleagues at Arizona State University and Portland State University. 

Finally, being part of a Sustainability Science Laboratory and graduate program in Mexico immersed me in conversations about sustainability, its meanings, definitions, and implementation. I have worked with several students on projects about how sustainability initiatives are implemented in indigenous communities in Mexico and the tensions that are expressed by applying universal goals to local contexts. These conversations continue at UCSD, where I teach Sustainable Development (USP 171), Urban World System (USP 2), the Design of Social Research (USP 125), ESYS 103 (Environmental Challenges: Science and Solutions), and a new course on Sustainable Food Systems (USP 142C).