Laura López-Hoffman, Ph.D.
Assistant Research Professor of Environmental Policy, Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy
Assistant Professor, School of Natural Resources and the Environment

Phone: (520) 626-9851
E-mail: lauralh@email.arizona.edu

PhD. 2003. Stanford University, Biological Sciences.

BA. 1996. Princeton University, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs & Latin American Studies

Laura López-Hoffman is an assistant professor at the School of Natural Resources and the Environment, and an assistant research professor at the Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy at the University of Arizona. She obtained her PhD from Stanford University in Biological Sciences and her BA from Princeton University. Prior to coming to the University of Arizona, she was an NSF post-doctoral fellow at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM).

López-Hoffman started her career as a tropical ecologist.  As an undergrad, she worked on the Amazon frontier on sustainable timber harvesting and then switched to mangroves in graduate school.  After years of slogging through mangrove swamps in the South Pacific and South America, she got out of the mud, came back to dry land, and focused on environmental policy.

Today, the objective of her research is to contribute to the development of environmental policies and institutions that protect ecosystems while sustaining their contributions to human well-being. She uses interdisciplinary and comparative research approaches to integrate science and policy, in particular the concept of ecosystem services.

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 Dave Breshears 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.

At the University of Arizona, López-Hoffman teaches an undergraduate course entitled, Ecosystem Services: Science and Policy. In Spring 2010, with Mitch McClaran and Ed de Steiguer, she offered a graduate seminar entitled, Collaboration in Natural Resource Management. This semester, Gary Nabhan, George Ruyle and she are offering a graduate seminar entitled, Ecosytem Services and Conservation Ranching.

López-Hoffman is the lead editor with Emily McGovern, Karl Flessa and Robert Varady of a book entitled, Conservation of Shared Environments: Learning from the United States and Mexico. The book is the first volume of the University of Arizona Press’s new book series Environmental Science, Law, and Policy. It was released in January 2010.

López-Hoffman has been awarded the 2010 School of Natural Resources and the Environment award for scholarly achievement and a Woodrow Wilson Foundation Career Enhancement Fellowship.