I am an Assistant Professor of Environmental Economics in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and a member of the Resilient Agriculture and Forest Systems Cluster. My research focuses on the economics of water resources, environmental risk, and natural resource management.

Previously, I was a postdoctoral research fellow in the Human Dimensions Department of the USDA Forest Service, where I contributed to the Water Chapter of the Resource Planning Act Assessment and conducted research quantifying the water quality benefits of wildfire risk reduction under the Wildfire Crisis Strategy. I earned my Ph.D. in Agricultural and Resource Economics from Colorado State University and both my M.S. and B.S. in Applied Economics from University of Arizona. 

Research

My research examines how environmental change, natural resource constraints, and institutions shape economic outcomes, with a particular focus on water. Current projects study the drivers and consequences of water scarcity, the economic impacts of wildfire and watershed degradation, the value of water-related ecosystem services, and the efficiency of water allocation institutions and markets. My work integrates economic theory and causal inference with geospatial analysis, hydrologic and process-based models, and machine learning to study environmental and natural resource systems.

Interdisciplinary Work

Much of my research sits at the intersection of economics and the natural sciences. I collaborate with hydrologists, climate scientists, engineers, ecologists, and agricultural scientists to connect physical changes in natural systems with their economic consequences. These collaborations have addressed topics including irrigated agriculture under hydroclimatic change, reservoir management, wildfire and drinking water,  and the economic value of ecosystem services.

Teaching

I teach environmental and natural resource economics, applied microeconomics, and quantitative methods. My teaching emphasizes connecting economic theory to real-world environmental and resource problems while giving students the analytical and computational tools needed to work with economic data. At Colorado State University, I taught courses in natural resource policy, forest economics, agricultural and resource economics, and statistical programming in R.