Crystele Leauthaud

she/her

Contact information: cleautha@ucsc.edu

Leauthaud Lab 

Natural Sciences 2, University of California, 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz

Crystele Leauthaud is a Cooperative Extension Specialist at the University of California, division of Agriculture and Natural Resources. She is also an Assistant Professor of Cooperative Extension at UC Santa Cruz, affiliated to the Center for Agroecology and the Department of Environmental Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC). 

She works on sustainable food systems, at the intersection between water management and agroecological systems in Mediterranean and semi-arid climates. She is interested in how to take into account irrigation and water management needs as we design the agroecological transition of food systems. She further works with farmers to quantify water usage and build new ways of managing irrigation. An overarching goal of her research and extension activities is to provide science-based guidance to local communities and develop solutions to challenges caused by the climate crisis, using both agroecology and AgTech knowledge-based solutions. 

Prior to her appointment at UC ANR, Crystele was a permanent research fellow in agro-hydrology applied to agroecological systems at CIRAD (French agricultural research centre for development), within the lab Joint Research Unit "Water Management, Actors, Territories" (UMR G-EAU) in Montpellier, France. She worked on hydrosystems in North Africa and SOuthern France. She has also worked in the Sahel region, Kenya, and Mexico.  

She holds an engineering diploma in agronomy from AgroParisTech, a Master’s degree in ecology from the French National Museum of Natural History and a PhD in hydro-ecosystems from the University of Montpellier, France. 

Expertise summary

Agroecology, agrarian diagnosis, multiservice irrigation, agroforestry, homemade manure-based teas, irrigation, low-cost open source sensing for water management, comparative agriculture, water budget models, innovation tracking, field experiments, hydrological modelling, soil water budgets, agrohydrology, hydrosystems, soil-water-plant relations, water conservation.