Keywords
desertification, human-environmental system, inner mongolia, multi-agent system, sloping land conversion programme
Start Date
1-7-2012 12:00 AM
Abstract
Some Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) programmes are designed to restore ecosystem services degraded by desertification, but evaluation of their effects are not straightforward because of complex human-environment systems (HES) in drylands. A PES system is used across China (the Sloping Land Conversion Programme, SLCP), including desertified regions. Previous research on SLCP indicated the lack of HES approaches to enable the integrated assessment of socio-ecological long-term effects of the programme. In particular, assessment was needed of: (1) multiple benefits, which cannot be positively correlated, including their cost-effectiveness, and (2) the effect of shifts in economic structure, particularly from agriculture to non-agriculture, to ensure socio-ecological sustainability after the programme ends. To address these challenges, a spatial agent-based land-use model was developed, named the Inner Mongolia Land Use Dynamic Simulator (IM-LUDAS). IM-LUDAS was empirically calibrated for a desertified region in northeast China. The model constitutes landscape agents with ecological attributes and sub-models of crop yield, land degradation, and land restoration and household agents having socio-economic attributes and land-use decision sub-models. The agents’ interactions are regulated as per external policy settings to assess the complex effects and benefits of SLCP. The effectiveness of SLCP in economic structural changes is evaluated using an adaptive decisionmaking mechanism. Simulation experiments showed that IM-LUDAS can produce HES properties, such as cross-scale feedback loops, thereby providing new insights into the programme assessment, such as a negative externality of restoration benefits and weak facilitation of economic structural changes.
An agent-based model for assessing effects of a Chinese PES programme on land-use change along with livelihood dynamics, and land degradation and restoration
Some Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) programmes are designed to restore ecosystem services degraded by desertification, but evaluation of their effects are not straightforward because of complex human-environment systems (HES) in drylands. A PES system is used across China (the Sloping Land Conversion Programme, SLCP), including desertified regions. Previous research on SLCP indicated the lack of HES approaches to enable the integrated assessment of socio-ecological long-term effects of the programme. In particular, assessment was needed of: (1) multiple benefits, which cannot be positively correlated, including their cost-effectiveness, and (2) the effect of shifts in economic structure, particularly from agriculture to non-agriculture, to ensure socio-ecological sustainability after the programme ends. To address these challenges, a spatial agent-based land-use model was developed, named the Inner Mongolia Land Use Dynamic Simulator (IM-LUDAS). IM-LUDAS was empirically calibrated for a desertified region in northeast China. The model constitutes landscape agents with ecological attributes and sub-models of crop yield, land degradation, and land restoration and household agents having socio-economic attributes and land-use decision sub-models. The agents’ interactions are regulated as per external policy settings to assess the complex effects and benefits of SLCP. The effectiveness of SLCP in economic structural changes is evaluated using an adaptive decisionmaking mechanism. Simulation experiments showed that IM-LUDAS can produce HES properties, such as cross-scale feedback loops, thereby providing new insights into the programme assessment, such as a negative externality of restoration benefits and weak facilitation of economic structural changes.
