I choose to pursue a technical degree in Agroecology while in high school, and looking to blend my ecological and agricultural interests I won a scholarship to attend the Escuela de Agricultura de la Región Tropical Húmeda (EARTH University) in Costa Rica. After graduating, a sponsored internship allowed me to travel to Lebanon and participate in implementing an organic agriculture community project in the community of Quaraoon (Bekaa Valley) with the American University of Beirut. Upon my return to Costa Rica I consulted a 500-associate African Palm production cooperative, located in my hometown, on on-farm recycling and organic and industrial solid waste composting. In search of higher education I traveled to US, and in 2006 I completed a Masters program in the School of Natural Resources and Environment of University of Florida. During my masters and sponsored by a SARE grant I studied the use of cover cropping systems for chemical inputs reduction. Afterwards I joined the GoBi Group of the Humboldt University of Berlin and helped with the world-wide assessment of the success and failure factors of Biosphere Reserves. Before becoming a PhD student in UF, I worked with the Invasive Plant Assessment of IFAS-UF. As a PhD student I have been able to gain training in ecological sciences and learn crucial tools for land use change analysis. I have enriched my academic experience by teaching introductory biology labs (BSC2010L) to undergraduates. At the end of my PhD research I plan to go back to tropical Latin America, as an academic or practitioner to help identify opportunities for satisfaction of rural development needs at low environmental burden.

Summary of Research: I will model the effect of migration, market dynamics and family structure characteristics (preliminary research findings) in land use decision-making by peasants living inside a biological corridor (Alexander Skutch Biological Corridor) in southern Costa Rica. I use a biological indicator, bee pollination enhancement, to estimate the impact of land use decisions on an economically and ecologically important crop: coffee. I measure how field complexity and management intensity (pesticide inputs) of coffee fields and landscape context (proportion of coffee, sugar cane, pasture and forest) affect bee meta-population dynamics and pollination services. Coffee is the land use that could help achieve the biological corridor function while fostering livelihoods.