Associate Professor Christie Klimas is interested in understanding how economic and environmental issues interact, specifically about how economic hardship impacts local ecology and environmental sustainability. Her work focuses primarily on tropical forest management and conservation. She is interested in alternatives to deforestation in the Amazon. As ASM for alluvial gold is an increasingly important driver of deforestation, she brings students to the Peruvian Amazon to connect with miners and local organizations working to reforest post-mining or mitigate the harms from mining (via mercury-free gold and other innovations).