HR: 16:55h
AN: H44B-04 INVITED     [Abstracts]
TI: Spatio-temporal Dynamics of Land-use and Land-cover Change: A Multi-agent Simulation Model and Its Application to an Upland Watershed in Central Vietnam
AU: * Le, Q
EM: blequan@uni-bonn.de
AF: Center for Development Research University of Bonn , Walter - Flex - Str.3, Bonn, D-53113 Germany
AU: Vlek, P L
EM: p.vlek@uni-bonn.de
AF: Center for Development Research University of Bonn , Walter - Flex - Str.3, Bonn, D-53113 Germany
AU: Park, S
EM: catena@snu.ac.kr
AF: Department of Geography Seoul National University , Shilim-Dong, Kwanak - GU, Seoul, 151-742 Korea, Republic of
AB: Land-use and land-cover change (LUCC) is an essential environmental process that should be monitored and prognosticated to provide a basis for better land management policy. However, LUCC modeling is a challenge due to the complex nature and unexpected behavior of both human drivers and natural constraints. This paper presents a multi-agent-based model to simulate spatio-temporal land-use changes and the interdependent socio-economic dynamics emerging from the complex socio-ecological interactions at micro levels resulting from land-use policy interventions. The model provides land-use scenarios under alternative policy to support decisions on land management for improved rural livelihoods while protecting the environment. In the multi-agent simulation model, the human community is represented by household agents (heterogeneous farming households) with their profiles and decision-making mechanisms about land use. The household profile defines the five asset dimensions of household livelihood (e.g., social, human, financial, natural and physical assets). The land-use decision-making program works by taking inputs from the household profile, perceived spatial environmental attributes, and introduced policies. The decision-making program is a logical procedure that combines a land-use choice model (multi-nominal logistic choices) and anthropological rules. The landscape environment is represented by landscape agents (congruent land patches of 30mx30m) with their state variables and ecological response mechanisms to environmental changes and human interventions. State variables of landscape agents correspond to spatial GIS-raster layers of biophysical, economic, and institutional variables. Ecological mechanisms of landscape agents are represented by internal sub-models of agricultural and forest productivity dynamics, which work in response to the current state, history, and spatial neighbourhood of the landscape agents. A multi-agent based protocol coordinates the flexible interactions among human and landscape agents, and monitors consequent land-use changes and associated socio-economic dynamics. The model was applied in a watershed of about 100 km2 in A-Luoi district, Central Vietnam. Spatially explicit data were obtained from Landsat ETM images, thematic maps, an extensive forest inventory, and an intensive household survey. Field data were used for calibrating agent's parameters and develop an initial database for simulation runs. Scenarios of land-use changes under different policy options on forest protection zoning, agrochemical subsidies and agricultural extension were generated to evaluate the consequences of such policy interventions. Preliminary simulation runs for 10 different policy options suggest that reducing the current proportion of protected area from 90% to 50% and increasing the enforcement of protection, together with the provision of extension services for a third of the total population, and subsidizing 5% of the population with agrochemicals ($US 16 household-1 year-1) would, on average, increase per capita gross income by 15% and significantly reduce forest degradation compared to the scenario based on the status quo (i.e., the policy settings of 2002).
DE: 1803 Anthropogenic effects (4802, 4902)
DE: 1834 Human impacts
DE: 1847 Modeling
DE: 1894 Instruments and techniques: modeling
DE: 6309 Decision making under uncertainty
SC: Hydrology [H]
MN: Fall Meeting 2005