People

Gabriela Garcia


Assistant Professor of Marine and Environmental Sciences, Public Policy and Urban Affairs
Member of IPHI

📧 ga.garcia@northeastern.edu
🌐 Garcia Lab

Question & Approach

Agricultural systems worldwide face complex challenges at the intersection of ecological and social dynamics, particularly in perennial crop systems and agroforestry landscapes. The Garcia lab investigates these dynamics through a socio-ecological lens, examining how alternate bearing patterns in perennial crops influence and are influenced by farmer decision-making, while also studying how agroforestry systems respond to climate disturbances across different spatial and temporal scales. Their research addresses critical knowledge gaps in understanding the mechanisms behind synchronized crop yield fluctuations and the resilience features of diversified agricultural systems.

The Garcia lab employs a multi-method approach combining field experiments, farmer interviews, and analysis of global datasets to investigate these questions. Their work spans multiple spatial scales – from individual farms to regional and national levels – and temporal scales – from seasonal to multi-year patterns. Through partnerships with The Nature Conservancy, they also examine nature-based solutions in critical ecosystems like the Amazon basin and evaluate the socio-cultural impacts of ecological restoration projects. This comprehensive approach enables them to identify key cross-scale interactions and develop strategies for enhancing agricultural system resilience while considering both ecological and social dimensions.

Bio

Dr. Gabriela M. Garcia is an Assistant Professor at Northeastern University with a joint appointment in the Department of Marine and Environmental Sciences and the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs. She is also a member of the Institute for Plant-Human Interface (IPHI). Prior to joining Northeastern, she served as a Fulbright-García Robles Postdoctoral Fellow at the Instituto de Investigaciones en Ecosistemas y Sustentabilidad (IIES) at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), where she analyzed feedbacks between crop plant traits, farmer decision-making, and agroecosystem services in Oaxaca. She completed her Ph.D. in Biology at Tufts University in 2022 under the advisement of Dr. Colin Orians, where her research explored resource tradeoffs as drivers of coffee yield fluctuations and their implications for agro-ecological resilience. During her doctoral studies, she was awarded multiple prestigious fellowships including the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship and conducted research as a Graduate Research Fellow at the NSF Socio-environmental Synthesis Center, investigating socio-environmental predictors of impact and recovery following Hurricane Maria on Puerto Rico’s coffee farming systems. She earned her B.A. in Psychology with a minor in Philosophy from Boston College in 2014, including a year of study abroad at Universidad Alberto Hurtado in Santiago, Chile. Her research combines expertise in multivariate statistical techniques, qualitative and quantitative interview analysis, geographic information systems, and fuzzy cognitive mapping, with fluency in Spanish and proficiency in various analytical tools including R Studio, ArcGIS, NVivo, and GitHub.

Key Publications

Garcia GM, Crone EE, Kuhl L, Orians CM. Intrinsic yield fluctuations interact with environmental shocks to threaten the socio-ecological resilience of perennial crop systems. One Earth. 2024;7: 1362-1372.

Garcia GM, Orians CM. Reproductive tradeoffs in a perennial crop: Exploring the mechanisms of coffee alternate bearing in relation to farm management. Agric Ecosyst Environ. 2022;340: 108151.

Garcia GM, Re B, Orians C, Crone E. By wind or wing: pollination syndromes and alternate bearing in horticultural systems. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2021;376: 20200371.

Van Rees C, Cañizares J, Garcia G, Reed JM. (2019). Ecological Stakeholder Analogs as intermediaries between freshwater biodiversity conservation and sustainable water management. Environ Policy Gov. 2019;29: 303-312.


Full list of publications on Google Scholar

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