Friday Features

Welcome to Friday Features! Or something like that … name to be determined. Regardless of the name, here’s the deal: A couple times a month I will post a series of links – a sort of what’s “trending” in the world of agent-based modeling (ABM), land change science, and/or sustainability science. So, without further ado ….

Thought-provoking …

• A Wired Science post about the legacy of medieval agricultural land-use patterns. An excellent example of how economic rationale manifests itself as striking land-use patterns. Source: Wired Science, Tim De Chant.
• Another Wired Science post about land-use patterns. Clear evidence for the importance of institutions in shaping land-use patterns and the need to better model institutional agents – a common problem in the ABM world. Source: Wired Science, Betsy Mason.

Interesting academic articles …

• “Interactions between organizations and networks in common–pool resource management”. I think this is the direction in which ABM and natural resource management research is heading. ABMs have high value in these contexts, as one can investigate the decision-making processes and behavioral mechanisms that lead to effective common-pool resource management.
• “High-performance computing tools for the integrated assessment and modelling of social–ecological systems”. At some point in developing ABMs, whether it’s due to many agents or complex simulated environments, computational barriers are encountered. This is especially true for integrated ABM and process-based ecosystem models. Although this paper is a bit technical, I’m glad to see these issues thoroughly explored.
• The above article is part of a “Thematic Issue on the Future of Integrated Modeling Science and Technology” in Environmental Modelling and Software.
• “Agent-based modeling for community resource management: Acequia-based agriculture”. An excellent example of how ABMs can be integrated with GIS information to act as a virtual laboratory – in this case, to investigate the sustainability of irrigated agriculture.
• The above article is part of a “Special Issue: Advances in Geocomputation” in Computer, Environment, and Urban Systems.