Laura López Hoffman
Assistant Professor
Area of Expertise:
Conservation biology and policy, tranboundary conservation, ecosystem servicesLaura Lopez-Hoffman is an Assistant Research Professor of Environmental Policy at the Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy and an Assistant Professor of Natural Resource Studies at the School of Natural Resources and Environment at the University of Arizona. The objective of her research is to contribute to the development of environmental policies and institutions that protect ecosystems and sustain their contributions to human well-being. She uses interdisciplinary and comparative research approaches to integrate science and policy.
Much of López-Hoffman’s work focuses how the ecosystem services approach can improve natural resource governance. For example, she and her students are investigating how ecosystem services are evaluated in environmental assessments under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). In addition, she and others are working on strategies to increase stakeholder resilience when faced with loss of ecosystem services due to abrupt climate change.
López-Hoffman is also very interested in the ecology and policy of managing transboundary systems. With colleagues at the USGS and UNAM, she has been studying how migratory species facilitate the sharing of ecosystem services between the United States and Mexico, and approaches to protecting migratory species. In addition, with colleagues across North America, she is investigating strategies to make transboundary conservation efforts more adaptive to climate change.
Laura Lopez-Hoffman is the lead editor with Emily McGovern, Karl Flessa and Robert Varady of a book entitled Conservation of Shared Environments. The book was the first volume the book series, Edge: Environmental Science, Law, and Policy (Formerly University of Arizona Press, now University of Chicago Press).
