Modelling agent's socio-economic and ecological environment: An agent-based approach for developing land use change scenarios

摘要

This paper analyses the impacts of future changes in the economic and climatic environment on economically less productive, but culturally very valuable agricultural areas in Europe, in particular the Alentejo, Portugal. An Agent-based model (ABM) isused to generate future projections of land use change from 2000 to 2050. The projections are based on: a) an analysis of economic and ecological constraints to certain land uses, b) the construction of scenarios of future socio-economic and climate change at the regional scale, and c) the application of a rule-based approach to add agent behaviour and local socio-cultural attitudes and perceptions. The ABM uses GIS maps to represent the biophysical characteristics of the study area such as land use patterns, soil type, topography, aspect, road and river networks, farm boundaries and natural protected areas. Through social surveys, information affecting the decisions and actions of farmers resulting from economic opportunities and environmental risks was gathered for use in the analysis. The results of the ABM simulations demonstrate its utility in developing land use change scenarios and evaluating the impacts of policies on land use decisions. Whilst not considered in the current model, the dynamicsof vegetation growth can also be captured in agent-based approaches of this form by considering each type of vegetation as an agent in the model. An ABM model that considers the dynamics of vegetation growth would be able to consider the impacts of specific farming techniques such as the application of fertilisers and irrigation.