Oral Session - Landscape Models to Predict Future Landscape Change - Day 1 Chair(s): Neale, Anne¹, ¹ Landscape Ecology Branch, Las Vegas, NV
Wednesday, March 31, 2004 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM Apollo Room 5

Agent Based Models of Land Use and Cover Change in the Atlantic Coast Region of Nicaragua: Agent Dynamics and Behavior. Fernandez, Luis ¹, ¹ School of Natural Resources and Environment, Ann Arbor, MI, USA

ABSTRACT- Previous studies examining deforestation dynamics have primarily focused on modeling approaches using remotely sensed data at regional scales with few efforts integrating household level social data with regional scale spatial models. This study proposes that an integrated approach, combining high frequency and cost-effectiveness of remotely sensed data with the more culturally accurate community level data, provides more accurate results in multi-cultural developing regions undergoing rapid changes in ethnic composition. The development of an agent based model to simulate the land use decision making processes of peasant farmers allows the exploration of this hypothesis in a innovative and effective manner. The ABMs, developed in SWARM and NETLOGO for this study, effectively models the complex economic, social, and cultural networks in which peasant farmers operate within the study are. Questions regarding how shifts in demographics resulting from intra-national migration, the effects of peasant economic integration into the regional, and (through globalization) international trade markets, and feedbacks from the altered environment affect the land use decision making and land clearing practices of farmers, which ultimately significantly influences the amount of deforestation. Questions regarding the definition of multiple agent classes empirically from survey data, and deriving agent characteristics and behaviors are also explored. Lastly, the models are used to study how land cover patterns may change in several policy, and migration pattern scenarios that are possible in the future. This study also presents the one of the first quantitative descriptions and analysis of land use and cover change of Eastern Nicaragua region in the literature.

KEY WORDS: Agent Based Models, Land Use/Land Cover Change, Tropical Deforestation