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• Campus: NB
• Email: leonardo.calzada@rutgers.edu
• PhD or MA: PhD
• School : SAS
• Department: Geography
• Research Areas (themes, countries): land system science, land-use change, political ecology, tropical forest, Mexico
• Dissertation Title: The kaleidoscope of the Maya Forest – agricultural change, forest governance and vegetation dynamics in communities of the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico
• Abstract of Dissertation Work: The current Mexican government has proposed a regional development plan in the Selva Maya that promotes multifunctional landscapes to address forest loss, climate change, and poverty alleviation through new forest governance arrangements. This development plan is composed of two synergistic projects, the first is the construction of the Mayan Touristic Train of 948 miles in length. The second is a public policy called Sembrando Vida, the most extensive reforestation program in the history of Mexico with a projection of 2 million hectares planted with timber and fruit trees. My research will focus on current frontier formations in the Maya Forest in Mexico as a case to expand on the recognition of how agrarian communities and forests relate and are co-constitutive. To do so, I will first characterize peasants' perspectives of the internal functioning of the ejido (agrarian communities under common management) and the values they assign to forests and Land. Second, I will analyze forest degradation using satellite images and pattern-based statistical models to generate future scenarios of forest degradation to 2025 and 2030. Finally, I will integrate peasants ' perspectives into the degradation analysis by discussing how these scenarios contrast with peasant imaginaries about future environmental and social change, producing what I have called "the kaleidoscope of the Maya Forest."
• Bio: Leonardo Calzada holds a B.A. and M.S. degree in Biological Sciences from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (National Autonomous University of Mexico). He served as Deputy Director of Biosafety Communication at the National Council of Science and Technology in Mexico. He is currently pursuing his Ph.D. in Geography at Rutgers University, where his dissertation focuses on understanding the impact of development frontier formation on agrarian transformation and landscape dynamics in tropical forests. His areas of interest include Land System Science, Political Ecology, and Data Science.
• Publications: Google Scholar