Dr. Diana Moanga

Biography

Diana Moanga is a Lecturer in the Earth Systems Program at Stanford University's Doerr School of Sustainability and serves as Manager of the Spatial Analysis Center. She teaches a comprehensive suite of geospatial courses, including Remote Sensing Land, Fundamentals of Geographic Information Science, and Advanced Concepts in Geospatial Information Science. Diana's research centers on coastal resilience, land system science, and conservation, with expertise in GIS and remote sensing. Her work focuses on understanding land use and land cover change processes, particularly examining the effects of environmental and anthropogenic stressors on coastal systems. She is notably passionate about advancing the understanding of coupled socio-ecological systems and mapping coastal hazards dynamics to develop resilience metrics. Diana earned her PhD in Environmental Science, Policy, and Management from the University of California, Berkeley in 2020, where her dissertation research employed geospatial techniques to study land use and land cover changes in California. Her doctoral work explored the management impacts on California's coastal lands and agricultural transitions in the Central Valley, as well as wildfire activity under future climate regimes. Prior to her doctoral studies, she completed her Master's in Marine Affairs Policy from the University of Miami in 2015, where she examined the spatial-temporal characteristics of harmful algal blooms and studied coastal zone management and coral conservation. She joined Stanford as a lecturer in 2023 after serving as a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford's Department of Earth System Science and previously at Florida International University's Sea Level Solutions Center.

Research Interests

Courses