characterization of determinants with an agent-based land use model

Wood is a limited resource which is exposed to a continuously growing global demand not least because of a politically fostered bioenergy use. One approach to master the challenge to sustainably meet this increasing wood demand is short rotation forestry (SRF). However, SRF is only gradually evolving and it is not fully understood which determinants hamper its expansion. This study provides theoretical insights into economic and environmental determinants of an SRF expansion and their interplay. This assessment requires the incorporation of farmers' decision-making based on an explicit investment appraisal. Therefore, we use an agent-based model to depict the decision- making of profit-maximizing farmers facing the choice between SRF, the cultivation of conventional annual agricultural crops and abstaining from cultivation (fallow land). The land use decisions are influenced by general economic determinants, such as market prices for wood and annual crops, and by site-dependent determinants, such as the environmental site quality. We found that the willingness to pay for SRF-based products and for annual crops most strongly influences the coverage of SRF in the landscape. SRF will in most cases be established on sites with low productivity. However, a decrease in the willingness to pay for annual crops will lead to a reallocation of SRF plantations to sites with higher productivity. Furthermore, our model results indicate that the impact of the distance to processing plants on farmers' decisions strongly depends on general economic determinants and the given spatial structure of the underlying natural landscape. Analysing the relative importance of different determinants of an SRF expansion, this study gives insights into the approach of using SRF to sustainably meet the growing wood demand. Moreover, these insights are taken as a starting point for the design of effective government interventions to promote SRF

Agent-Based Modelling of Social-Ecological Systems: Achievements, Challenges, and a Way Forward

Abstract: Understanding social-ecological systems (SES) is crucial to supporting the sustainable management of resources. Agent-based modelling is a valuable tool to achieve this because it can represent the behaviour and interactions of organisms, human actors and institutions. Agent-based models (ABMs) have therefore already been widely used to study SES. However, ABMs of SES are by their very nature complex. They are therefore di icult to parameterize and analyse, which can limit their usefulness. It is time to critically reflect upon the current state-of-the-art to evaluate to what degree the potential of agent-based modelling for gaining general insights and supporting specific decision-making has already been utilized. We reviewed achievements and challenges by building upon developments in good modelling practice in the field of ecological modelling with its longer history. As a reference, we used the TRACE framework, which encompasses elements of model development, testing and analysis. We firstly reviewed achievements and challenges with regard to the elements of the TRACE framework addressed in reviews and method papers of social-ecological ABMs. Secondly, in a mini-review, we evaluated whether and to what degree the elements of the TRACE framework were addressed in publications on specific ABMs. We identified substantial gaps with regard to ( ) communicating whether the models represented real systems well enough for their intended purpose and ( ) analysing the models in a systematic and transparent way so that model output is not only observed but also understood. To fill these gaps, a joint e ort of the modelling community is needed to foster the advancement and use of strategies such as participatory approaches, standard protocols for communication, sharing of source code, and tools and strategies for model design and analysis. Throughout our analyses, we provide specific recommendations and references for improving the state-of-the-art. We thereby hope to contribute to the establishment of a new advanced culture of agent-based modelling of SES that will allow us to better develop general theory and practical solutions

Social-ecological modeling for policy analysis in transformative land systems - Supporting evaluation and communication for sustainability

The increasing demand for food and fiber, the need for climate change mitigation and adaptation as well as for environmental protection impose severe challenges on land systems worldwide. Solutions to support the transformation towards a sustainable development of land systems are needed. One response to the multiple challenges is the introduction of policy options aimed at steering land use activities towards a bundle of societal goals. However, it is difficult to empirically foresee the effectiveness and unintended consequences of policy options prior to their deployment. A second response is environmental education because human consumption behavior, among other factors, strongly influences natural ecosystems. However, it is a non-trivial task to develop effective communication strategies for complex topics such as sustainable land management. In both cases, modeling can help to overcome the different obstacles along the way. In this thesis, dynamic process-based social-ecological models at the individual scale are developed and analyzed to study effectiveness and unintended side effects of policy options, which promote agricultural management strategies and were intentionally designed to cope with multiple societal challenges. Two case studies of political intervention are investigated: the promotion of perennial woody crops in European agricultural landscapes for a sustainable bioeconomy and governmental supplementary feeding programs to cope with climate risks in pastoral systems in drylands. These two case studies are complemented by the development of a serious online game on sustainable land management in general that bridges the gap between land use modeling and environmental education. Simulation results of this thesis provide insights into (i) the performance of the politically promoted agricultural management strategies in meeting various intended goals such as poverty alleviation or the maintenance of biodiversity and ecosystem services, (ii) the emergence of unintended (environmental and social) side effects such as land use conflicts, land degradation or cost explosion and (iii) the mitigation of such side effects by appropriately adjusting the design of the policy options. These insights are enabled by representing temporal as well as spatial variability in the developed models. Furthermore, different mechanistic approaches of transferability analyses based on stylized landscapes are developed and applied. They enable to check whether and in what respect policy impacts actually differ substantially between regional contexts, to identify what regional factors steer the impact and to derive indicators for grouping regions of similar policy impacts. Finally, based on a conducted survey-based evaluation and experiences from various applications, the value of the developed serious game for environmental education is revealed and discussed.Altogether, this thesis contributes to model-based decision support for steering transformation towards the sustainable development of land systems in an appropriate way. This is done by developing appropriate social-ecological modeling approaches, by performing specific policy impact analyses in two transformative agricultural systems using these models and by providing a model-based communication tool for environmental education

Assessing Regional-Scale Impacts of Short Rotation Coppices on Ecosystem Services by Modeling Land-Use Decisions

Meeting the world's growing energy demand through bioenergy production involves extensive land-use change which could have severe environmental and social impacts. Second generation bioenergy feedstocks offer a possible solution to this problem. They have the potential to reduce land-use conflicts between food and bioenergy production as they can be grown on low quality land not suitable for food production. However, a comprehensive impact assessment that considers multiple ecosystem services (ESS) and biodiversity is needed to identify the environmentally best feedstock option, as trade-offs are inherent. In this study, we simulate the spatial distribution of short rotation coppices (SRCs) in the landscape of the Mulde watershed in Central Germany by modeling profit-maximizing farmers under different economic and policy-driven scenarios using a spatially explicit economic simulation model. This allows to derive general insights and a mechanistic understanding of regional-scale impacts on multiple ESS in the absence of large-scale implementation. The modeled distribution of SRCs, required to meet the regional demand of combined heat and power (CHP) plants for solid biomass, had little or no effect on the provided ESS. In the policy-driven scenario, placing SRCs on low or high quality soils to provide ecological focus areas, as required within the Common Agricultural Policy in the EU, had little effect on ESS. Only a substantial increase in the SRC production area, beyond the regional demand of CHP plants, had a relevant effect, namely a negative impact on food production as well as a positive impact on biodiversity and regulating ESS. Beneficial impacts occurred for single ESS. However, the number of sites with balanced ESS supply hardly increased due to larger shares of SRCs in the landscape. Regression analyses showed that the occurrence of sites with balanced ESS supply was more strongly driven by biophysical factors than by the SRC share in the landscape. This indicates that SRCs negligibly affect trade-offs between individual ESS. Coupling spatially explicit economic simulation models with environmental and ESS assessment models can contribute to a comprehensive impact assessment of bioenergy feedstocks that have not yet been planted

Overview, Design concepts and Details (ODD) of the simulation model for the serious online game LandYOUs

<p>This document is providing all information necessary to in-depth understand the model underlying the LandYOUs game (www.landyous.org). It follows the ODD (Overview, Design concepts, Details) protocol as suggested in Grimm et al. (2006), Grimm et al. (2010)  and focusses specifically on the underlying model feedbacks of the spatially explicit model. The LandYOUs online computer game is implemented based on the GISCAME (www.giscame.org) framework. Note, we do not report on the technical issues of GISCAME here.</p

How to avoid unsustainable side effects of managing climate risk in drylands - The supplementary feeding controversy

The increase in climate risk is of great concern in diylands. Providing livestock with supplementary fodder has become a widely used strategy for coping with this risk. However, its application is controversial. On the one hand, this form of supplementation allows smallholders to avoid a breakdown in animal numbers in times of drought. On the other hand, it keeps herd sizes high and may thus result in rangeland degradation in the long term. This study aims to tackle the question: can supplementary feeding strategies be designed in such a way that they help to reduce livestock asset risk, but avoid or at least reduce unsustainable side effects on pastures? We constructed a stylized ecological-economic simulation model parameterized to a Moroccan case study which incorporates feedbacks between management and vegetation-livestock dynamics under stochastic rainfall. Three supplementation strategies are compared. Furthermore, the impact of socio-economic and climatic change processes, such as price increases for supplementary fodder or rising fluctuations in rainfall, is investigated. Our results show that the conventional supplementation strategy, which supplements in years of forage shortage, reduces livestock asset risk in the short term. However, it can lead to lower pasture productivity and lower yields from pastoralism in the long run. In contrast, a hypothetical strategy which additionally supplements in the year after a drought in order to rest the pasture reduces livestock asset risk and maintains pastures in a better condition without increasing the amount of supplementation. On the methodological level, this study shows the potential of ecological-economic models to assess new management strategies under different processes of global change. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Land-use/land-cover in the Mulde watershed and its location in Germany [36–38].

<p>Land-use/land-cover in the Mulde watershed and its location in Germany [<a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0153862#pone.0153862.ref036" target="_blank">36</a>–<a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0153862#pone.0153862.ref038" target="_blank">38</a>].</p

Parameter and datasets used to calculate yield of the poplar clone Max.

<p>Parameter and datasets used to calculate yield of the poplar clone Max.</p

Data items for carbon storage (No. 2, 16), P retention and export (No. 1–7, 10–12), sediment retention and export (No. 1–3, 8–9, 13–15 and for biodiversity (No. 2, 17–21); we refined the default parameter of InVEST with the indicated sources (No. 10–15); methodological sources are equally included.

<p>Data items for carbon storage (No. 2, 16), P retention and export (No. 1–7, 10–12), sediment retention and export (No. 1–3, 8–9, 13–15 and for biodiversity (No. 2, 17–21); we refined the default parameter of InVEST with the indicated sources (No. 10–15); methodological sources are equally included.</p