diane garcia-gonzales

Diane Garcia-Gonzales, PhD, MPH

Postdoctoral Scholar

Institute of the Environment and Sustainability

I am a recent graduate of the Environmental Health Sciences doctoral program from the University of California at Berkeley, and currently a postdoctoral scholar at the University of California at Los Angeles’s Institute of the Environment and Sustainability.My doctoral thesis was conducted in consultation with Professor Michael Jerrett and focused on characterizing air quality near oil and natural gas development and storage sites. In my research, I identified several hazardous air pollutants near oil and natural gas facilities during the upstream process and characterized the distance decay gradient to distinguish the human health impact zone in both rural and urban environments. I conducted field experiments around Weld County, Colorado near several active oil and gas wells using both passive and active samplers to characterize the distance at which several air pollutants decay to background levels and have conducted similar field experiments in Southern California near urban drilling sites. More recently, I measured air quality in the community of Porter Ranch, California during the active Aliso Canyon natural gas blowout.