Research Interests

I am primarily interested in the environmental effects of the landless movement in Brazil. Specifically, my dissertation research focuses on the linkages between land conflict and deforestation in the Eastern Brazilian Amazon. Land conflict is an important underlying driver of land-cover change and my work focuses on quantifying its impacts.

In addition to my dissertation research I am also interested in social conceptions of nature, political ecology and social theory, the environmental and social impacts of globalization, land-cover and land-use change, biogeography, conflict throughout Latin America, development theory, water quality and its links to land use, environmental history, and the quantitative modeling of environmental and human systems.

Last updated January 5, 2009 - aldric30@msu.edu