Hello!  Welcome to the official website of Luci Lu 

I am a social scientist at the Jornada Experimental Range at New Mexico State University. My research focuses on the connections between humans and landscapes—how each depends on and reshapes the other. Specifically, I study how dryland ranchers and pastoralists make decisions, and how those choices shape the landscapes they steward. I bring together social-ecological theory,  social data and geospatial analysis and modeling to understand these feedbacks. 

My journey into socio-ecological research began a decade ago in a small village in the Gobi Desert, where I worked with the NGO SEE Conservation and dryland oasis farmers on microfinancing and sustainable agricultural projects. This experience sparked a path of exciting research, fieldwork, and collaboration across Inner Mongolia and Eastern Tibet, which now continues in the drylands of the Southwestern United States.