Research

American Indian reservations are often characterized by low income and high rates of poverty relative to adjacent non-reservation land. Insecure property rights affect agricultural investment decisions, reducing incentive for long-term investments.

We use a spatial regression discontinuity (RD) approach to identify the effect of tribal ownership on agricultural development. A 1905 land allotment is used both directly and as an instrument on current land ownership to identify an effect on irrigation rates and investment and crop choice.

This work is a part of the Native Waters on Arid Lands project to collaboratively understand the impacts of climate change and to evaluate adaptation options for sustaining water resources and agriculture on tribal reservations.

In addition to the individual research, I am a researcher of the university's pioneering Climate Adaptation Science program, a graduate traineeship funded by the National Science Foundation. As a group, we students in the program have been collaborating on an interdisciplinary study of rural and urban wildfire trends and impacts throughout the US Intermountain West, with the purpose of informing the management of wildfire in a changing world.

Through the program, I also intern with the USGS Southwest Biological Science Center. I mainly investigate social-ecological systems of the Colorado Plateau and the impact of the energy development to local economic development in Colorado.