Hello! 👋 

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 ripple across the landscapes they steward. I bring together social-ecological theory, survey and open data, and spatial modeling to understand the complex feedbacks between human decisions and landscape change. 

My journey into socio-ecological research began a decade ago in a small village in the Gobi desert, where I worked with an 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 in the Southwest United States. 

Feel free to get in touch! my email is lucilu[at]nmsu.edu. Welcome to the official website of Luci Lu