Understanding the role of human
cognition in land-use change
Conrad Rider
PhD Geography
BSc Computer Science (hons)
Institute of Geography
Femke Reitsma, William Mackaness & Andy Dugmore
www.eviltree.co.uk
Outline
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Introduction to Land-Use Change (LUC)
Modelling land use change
Human decision making
Research questions and approach
March 2006
Conrad Rider www.eviltree.co.uk
2
Land cover and use
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Driven by:
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Biophysical (climate,
terrain, soil, wildlife)
Human (population,
politics, economy,
technology, values)
factors
March 2006
Conrad Rider www.eviltree.co.uk
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Implications of inappropriate
land use
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Climate change (global warming)
Reduction in ecological biodiversity
Economic failure, poverty
Poor health (starvation, disease)
March 2006
Conrad Rider www.eviltree.co.uk
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LUC modelling approaches
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Equation-based - limited complexity
Systems models - aggregation
Statistical - neglect socioeconomic factors
Evolutionary - opaque
Cellular - homogeneous decision making
Multiagent - computationally expensive
March 2006
Conrad Rider www.eviltree.co.uk
5
Multiagent models of LUC
March 2006
Conrad Rider www.eviltree.co.uk
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Agent decision making
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Approaches:
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March 2006
Reactive
Behaviour-based Subsumption
Logic-based
Folk psychology BDI
Evolutionary Genetic Algs
Connectionist Neural networks
Conrad Rider www.eviltree.co.uk
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Research questions
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Farmer decision making strategies
Methodology for representing decision
making (agent architectures)
Case Study:
Organic Farming in Scotland,
Organic Aid Scheme
March 2006
Conrad Rider www.eviltree.co.uk
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Methodology
March 2006
Conrad Rider www.eviltree.co.uk
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