Research Interests:

I focus on human-environment relationships in Latin America. I spend as much time in Latin America as my teaching schedule permits. My interests in human-environment relationships in Latin America run the range of geographical inquiry. For example, I examine the impacts of rural electrification on firewood consumption, how migration to the United States changes land use practices and ownership patterns on Guatemala's frontiers, how forty years of civil war impacted the environment, how community cohesion (social capital) influences resource use, the interplay of human population dynamics and biodiversity, long-term (14,000 years) human modification of the environment in highland Guatemala, and water resource management on evolving frontiers. My teaching interests match my diverse research interests. I love to be in the field in rural Latin America. I encourage students who want to undertake research in Latin America to pop into my office for an exchange of ideas.

Selected Publications:

• Taylor, M.J. 2005. Electrifying rural Guatemala: central policy and rural reality. Environment and Planning C, 23 (2): 173-189
• Taylor, M.J., and Steinberg, M.K. 2006. Forty Years of Conflict: State, Church, and Spontaneous Representation of Massacres and Murder in Guatemala, in Jack Santino (Ed.), Spontaneous Shrines and the Public Memorialization of Death. Palgrave MacMillan, London, p. 305-331.
• Sutton, P.C., Taylor, M.J., and Elvidge, C.D. 2007. Using DMSP OLS Imagery to Characterize Urban Populations in Developed and Developing Countries, in Rashed, T. and Juergens, C. (Eds.) Remote Sensing of Urban and Suburban Areas.
• Steinberg, M.K. and Taylor, M.J. 2002. Public Memory and Political Power: Competing Views of the Past in Guatemala’s Post-Conflict Landscape. Geographical Review, 93 (4): 449-468.
• Taylor, M.J., Moran-Taylor, M., and Rodman-Ruiz, D. Land, Ethnic, and Gender Change: Transnational Migration and its Effects on Guatemalan Lives and Landscapes. Geoforum, in press.
• Steinberg, M.K. and Taylor, M.J., 2002. The impact of cultural change and political turmoil on maize culture and diversity in highland Guatemala. Mountain Research and Development, 22 (4):344-351.
• Bennett, D., and Taylor, M.J. 2007. Examining the role of small-scale coffee producers in the conservation of biodiversity in northern Nicaragua. Southwestern Geographer 10:4-23.
• Steinberg, M.K. and Taylor, M.J. 2007 Opium Poppy Production in Highland Guatemala: Symptom of a Failing Development Landscape. Mountain Research and Development 27(4):318-321.
• McBride, R.A., Taylor, M.J., Byrnes, M.R. 2007. Coastal morphodynamics and chenier-plain evolution in southwestern Louisiana, USA: A geomorphic model. Geomorphology, 88 (3-4): 367-422.
• Sutton, P.C., Taylor, M.J. Anderson, S., and Elvidge, C.D. 2007. Sociodemographic Characterization of Urban Areas using Nighttime Imagery, Google Earth, Landsat and ³Social² Ground Truthing, in Qihao Weng and Dale Quattrochi (Eds.), Urban Remote Sensing. CRC Press, Boca Raton Florida, p. 291-310.
• Taylor, M.J.. 2006 : Biomass in the Borderlands: Charcoal, and Firewood Production in Sonoran Ejidos Journal of the Southwest 48 (1): 63-90.
• Taylor, M.J., Moran-Taylor, M., and Rodman-Ruiz, D. 2006. Land, Ethnic, and Gender Change: Transnational Migration and its Effects on Guatemalan Lives and Landscapes. Geoforum 37:41-61.