Marcellus Caldas

Professor Marcellus Caldas is a professor in the Department of Geography and Geospatial Sciences at Kansas State University. Caldas is an economic-environmental geographer that study land systems, specifically the interactions of social, economic, and environmental processes. His conceptual framework is derived from an economic and social perspective that considers the behavioral attitudes of agents, and implications for the environment. He has many interests in the field of land use science, especially in understanding the drivers of land use and land cover change, and its consequences on biodiversity conservation, and the analysis of conservation policies. His research has focused on forest frontier of Latin America, especially in the Brazilian Amazon, but he has also worked in the Brazilian Cerrado. His recent work has focused on extractive reserves in the Amazon and the effects of wildfire in the biodiversity of the Brazilian Pantanal and in the conservation reserve programs in the Great Plains, USA.