Thomas K. Rudel is professor in the departments of Human Ecology and Sociology at Rutgers University. He is the author of Tropical Forests: Regional Patterns of Destruction and Regeneration in the Late Twentieth Century (2005), which won the 2008 Outstanding Publication Award from the Environment and Technology section of the American Sociological Association, as well as Tropical Deforestation: Small Farmers and Land Clearing in the Ecuadorian Amazon (1993), and Situations and Strategies in American Land Use Planning (Cambridge 1989). Dr Rudel has won the 1995 Distinguished Contribution to Environmental Society Award and the 2009 Merit Award from the Natural Resources Research Group of the… Rural Sociological Society for his research.