The Use Of Agent Based Models As Virtual Laboratories For Exploring Human Environment Interactions In Land Use Systems
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The Routledge Handbook of Landscape Ecology
The Handbook provides a supporting guide to key aspects and applications of landscape ecology to underpin its research and teaching. A wide range of contributions written by expert researchers in the field summarize the latest knowledge on landscape ecology theory and concepts, landscape processes, methods and tools, and emerging frontiers. Landscape ecology is an interdisciplinary and holistic discipline, and this is reflected in the chapters contained in this Handbook. Authors from varying disciplinary backgrounds tackle key concepts such as landscape structure and function, scale and connectivity; landscape processes such as disturbance, flows, and fragmentation; methods such as remote sensing and mapping, fieldwork, pattern analysis, modelling, and participation and engagement in landscape planning; and emerging frontiers such as ecosystem services, landscape approaches to biodiversity conservation, and climate change. Each chapter provides a blend of the latest scientific understanding of its focal topics along with considerations and examples of their application from around the world. An invaluable guide to the concepts, methods, and applications of landscape ecology, this book will be an important reference text for a wide range of students and academics in ecology, geography, biology, and interdisciplinary environmental studies.
The Use of Agent-based Models as Virtual Laboratories for Exploring Human-environment Interactions in Land-use Systems
Land-cover changes from human land-uses are seen as primary sources of global environmental change. The multitude of forces influencing land change and the complexity of their interactions present substantial challenges for connecting land-use changes to their causes at and between local, regional, and global scales. Due to this complexity, simulation modeling is a primary tool for conceptualizing land-use system structure and testing causal explanations of observed patterns of land changes. Inductive modeling methods, which have been the dominant approach in land change science, have advanced understanding of global patterns and driving forces of land-use and -cover change (LUCC). However, because land-use systems exhibit nonlinear dynamics driven by adaptive responses of human decision-makers, deductive modeling methods that build process-based understanding of land change are also needed. Using two different agent-based models as virtual laboratories, this dissertation explores how individual land users' decision-making processes translate into observed land-use patterns across a spectrum of different land-use systems. The first model represented the decision-making models and interactions of consumer, farmer, and developer agents in land and housing markets in an expanding ex-urban land-use system, which produced development patterns characteristic of 'urban sprawl' from the bottom-up. The same modeling framework was adapted to experimentally test alternative developer decision-making models, and results indicated cognitive biases and credit constraints may lead to inefficient land-use patterns and impediments to adopting ecological subdivision designs. The second model tested mechanistic explanations of empirically-based, system-level patterns of agricultural change due to individual land-user responses to changing environmental, demographic, and economic conditions. Results demonstrated threshold transitions between alternative livelihood strategies defined by interactions between market influence and population pressure. The model was then expanded and applied to a range of real land-use systems. Comparisons across six sites illustrated the varying effects of common processes driving land-use change, and revealed important mechanisms that influenced agents' land-use decisions and resulting patterns of LUCC. Ultimately, agent-based virtual laboratories made explicit and testable connections between individual decision-making processes and system-level patterns of LUCC. I conclude with a synthesis of the insights gained from model experiments, and put forth a framework for a general land systems theory.
The Routledge Handbook of Research Methods for Social-Ecological Systems
The Routledge Handbook of Research Methods for Social-Ecological Systems provides a synthetic guide to the range of methods that can be employed in social-ecological systems (SES) research. The book is primarily targeted at graduate students, lecturers and researchers working on SES, and has been written in a style that is accessible to readers entering the field from a variety of different disciplinary backgrounds. Each chapter discusses the types of SES questions to which the particular methods are suited and the potential resources and skills required for their implementation, and provides practical examples of the application of the methods. In addition, the book contains a conceptual and practical introduction to SES research, a discussion of key gaps and frontiers in SES research methods, and a glossary of key terms in SES research. Contributions from 97 different authors, situated at SES research hubs in 16 countries around the world, including South Africa, Sweden, Germany and Australia, bring a wealth of expertise and experience to this book. The first book to provide a guide and introduction specifically focused on methods for studying SES, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars of sustainability science, environmental management, global environmental change studies and environmental governance. The book will also be of interest to upper-level undergraduates and professionals working at the science–policy interface in the environmental arena.