Search

Livestock grazing in drylands supports pastoral livelihoods but is facing multiple changes including shocks such as severe droughts. Herdsmen specifically cite drought events as a reason for the abandonment of their transhumance practices. The purpose of this study is to assess the relevance of drought as a driving force for losses of livelihood security leading to a specific systemic change – households abandoning transhumant pastoralism. We present and apply a framework for systematic analyses of the social–ecological functioning of pastoral resource use that consists of the following components: (1) A spatially-explicit social–ecological model for analyzing the system dynamics, especially in face of severe drought in connection with other driving forces of variability, (2) an operationalized measure for assessing livelihood security, and (3) a strategy for systematic vulnerability assessments of pastoral households by scenario comparison. This approach is applied to the land use system of the transhumant pastoralists in the High Atlas Mountains of Morocco. The results indicate that drought is the main threat to livelihood security in only a few cases, eventually forcing households to abandon their transhumant lifestyle. Instead, other (endogenous and exogenous) sources of variability were found to be the main driving force for vulnerability, depending on the household characteristics such as income needs and the level of pastoral mobility. We discuss implications on the role of severe drought in connection with other processes of global change such as social change and land use change for livelihood security in pastoral systems. Moreover, on the basis of these findings, we discuss how the relevance of shocks as a driving force of systemic changes in coupled human-nature-systems may be adequately explored. These conclusions concern the interplay of exogenous and endogenous factors, and unintended side-effects of intended changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Land is a limited resource providing various services. Decisions on land use shape the distribution of these life support functions and thus require understanding of complex feedbacks between decisions on land use and human resource appropriation. Due to multiple nonlinear feedbacks between management, productivity, environmental quality, and human well-being, complexity is an inherent property of land systems. We present an educational game, which aims at illustrating options of sustainable land management to the interested public, students and stakeholders. The game provides the opportunity to govern a country by exploring how contrasting dimensions of sustainability (economy, environment and social conditions), can be harmonized regionally, while continuously being threatened by global trade fluctuations. The game was tested by several groups of students from high schools and universities. The feedback shows that the game is a valuable tool in environmental education initiating learning the complexity of feedbacks in land use and resources appropriation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Representing human decisions is of fundamental importance in agent-based models. However, the rationale for choosing a particular human decision model is often not sufficiently empirically or theoretically substantiated in the model documentation. Furthermore, it is difficult to compare models because the model descriptions are often incomplete, not transparent and difficult to understand. Therefore, we expand and refine the ‘ODD’ (Overview, Design Concepts and Details) protocol to establish a standard for describing ABMs that includes human decision-making (ODD + D). Because the ODD protocol originates mainly from an ecological perspective, some adaptations are necessary to better capture human decision-making. We extended and rearranged the design concepts and related guiding questions to differentiate and describe decision-making, adaptation and learning of the agents in a comprehensive and clearly structured way. The ODD + D protocol also incorporates a section on ‘Theoretical and Empirical Background’ to encourage model designs and model assumptions that are more closely related to theory. The application of the ODD + D protocol is illustrated with a description of a social–ecological ABM on water use. Although the ODD + D protocol was developed on the basis of example implementations within the socio-ecological scientific community, we believe that the ODD + D protocol may prove helpful for describing ABMs in general when human decisions are included. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The acceptance and usefulness of simulation models are often limited by the efficiency, transparency, reproducibility, and reliability of the modelling process. We address these issues by suggesting that modellers (1) "trace" the iterative modelling process by keeping a modelling notebook corresponding to the laboratory notebooks used by empirical researchers, (2) use a standardized notebook structure and terminology based on the existing TRACE documentation framework, and (3) use their notebooks to compile TRACE documents that supplement publications and reports. These practices have benefits for model developers, users, and stakeholders: improved and efficient model design, analysis, testing, and application; increased model acceptance and reuse; and replicability and reproducibility of the model and the simulation experiments. Using TRACE terminology and structure in modelling notebooks facilitates production of TRACE documents. We explain the rationale of TRACE, provide example TRACE documents, and suggest strategies for keeping "TRACE Modelling Notebooks." • The quality and reproducibility of modelling would be increased by keeping modelling notebooks. • Simulation modellers have not yet developed a strong culture of keeping notebooks. • We propose a standard format for notebooks based on the TRACE document framework. • We make recommendations about the type of information to be included in the notebooks. • We describe existing tools to keep notebooks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]