Laura’s research interests relate to hydro-economic models integration, climate change, and its hydrological and economical implications on water use. Another area of interest is to expand her research towards water conservation strategies and economic development in Latin America.
Her graduate research work integrated WEAP with an economic model developed by Richard Howitt at the University of California-Davis. Laura’s research focused on a new integration method for economic and hydrological models incorporating farmers’ regional water valuation functions from the State Wide Agricultural Production Model (SWAP) into the WEAP application for the Sacramento Basin in California. Her interdisciplinary work has resulted on a project at SEI regarding economic assessment of climate change for the entire Central Valley in California with the objective of applying this new integration method.
Laura received her B.S. in managerial economics and a master’s degree in agricultural and resource economics from the University of California-Davis.
- Economic and climate challenges in the Mendoza wine region
- Improving gender inclusion in SEI’s capacity building work
- Guidance materials for mainstreaming gender perspectives into model-based policy analysis
- Integrating complex economic and hydrologic planning models: An application for drought under climate change analysis
- Exploring scientific information for policy making under deep uncertainty