Computational Model Library

Displaying 10 of 33 results agriculture clear search

WATER REUSE ADOPTION BY FARMERS (WRAF)

Farshid Shoushtarian | Published Tuesday, September 27, 2022

Agriculture is the largest water-consuming sector worldwide, responsible for almost 70% of the world’s total freshwater consumption. Agricultural water reuse is one of the most sustainable and reliable methods to alleviate water shortages worldwide. However, the dynamics of agricultural water reuse adoption by farmers and its impacts on local water resources are still unknown to the scientific community, according to the literature. Therefore, the primary purpose of the WRAF model is to investigate the micro-level dynamics of agricultural water reuse adoption by farmers and its impacts on local water resources. The WRAF was developed using agent-based modeling as an exploratory tool for scenario analysis. The model was specifically designed for researchers and water resources decision-makers, especially those interested in natural resources management and water reuse.
WRAF simulates a virtual agricultural area in which several autonomous farms operate. It also simulates these farms’ water consumption dynamics. The developed model includes two types of agents: farmers and wastewater treatment plants. In general, farmer agents are the main water-consuming agents, and wastewater treatment plant agents are recycled water providers in the WRAF model. Dynamic simulation of agricultural water supply and demand in the area allows the user to observe the results of various irrigation water management scenarios, including recycled water. The models also enable the user to apply multiple climate change scenarios, including normal, moderate drought, severe drought, and wet weather conditions.

An empirical ABM for regional land use/cover change: a Dutch case study

Diego Valbuena | Published Saturday, March 12, 2011 | Last modified Thursday, November 11, 2021

This is an empirical model described in http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2010.05.001. The objective of the model is to simulate how the decision-making of farmers/agents with different strategies can affect the landscape structure in a region in the Netherlands.

Charcoal Record Simulation Model (CharRec)

Grant Snitker | Published Monday, November 16, 2015 | Last modified Thursday, September 30, 2021

This model (CharRec) creates simulated charcoal records, based on differing natural and anthropogenic patterns of ignitions, charcoal dispersion, and deposition.

Large-scale land acquisitions (LSLAs) threaten smallholder livelihoods globally. Despite more than a decade of research on the LSLA phenomenon, it remains a challenge to identify governance conditions that may foster beneficial outcomes for both smallholders and investors. One potentially promising strategy toward this end is contract farming (CF), which more directly involves smallholder households in commodity production than conditions of acquisition and displacement.

To improve understanding of how CF may mediate the outcomes of LSLAs, we developed an agent-based model of smallholder livelihoods, which we used as a virtual laboratory to experiment on a range of hypothetical LSLA and CF implementation scenarios.

The model represents a community of smallholder households in a mixed crop-livestock system. Each agent farms their own land and manages a herd of livestock. Agents can also engage in off-farm employment, for which they earn a fixed wage and compete for a limited number of jobs. The principal model outputs include measures of household food security (representing access to a single, staple food crop) and agricultural production (of a single, staple food crop).

The SMASH model is an agent-based model of rural smallholder households. It models households’ evolving income and wealth, which they earn through crop sales. Wealth is carried in the form of livestock, which are grazed on an external rangeland (exogenous) and can be bought/sold as investment/coping mechanisms. The model includes a stylized representation of soil nutrient dynamics, modeling the inflows and outflows of organic and inorganic nitrogen from each household’s field.

The model has been applied to assess the resilience-enhancing effects of two different farm-level adaptation strategies: legume cover cropping and crop insurance. These two strategies interact with the model through different mechanims - legume cover cropping through ecological mechanisms and crop insurance through financial mechanisms. The model can be used to investigate the short- and long-term effects of these strategies, as well as how they may differently benefit different types of household.

This repository contains: (1) a model calibration procedure that identifies a set of diverse, plausible models; and (2) an ABM of smallholder agriculture, which is used as a case study application for the calibration method. By identifying a set of diverse models, the calibration method attends to the issue of “equifinality” prevalent in complex systems, which is a situation where multiple plausible process descriptions exist for a single outcome.

The MML is a hybrid modeling environment that couples an agent-based model of small-holder agropastoral households and a cellular landscape evolution model that simulates changes in erosion/deposition, soils, and vegetation.

AMBAWA simulates the flows of biomass between crop and livestock systems at the field, farm, and village scales in order to showcase innovating management practices of soil fertility in West Africa.

This model extends the original Artifical Anasazi (AA) model to include individual agents, who vary in age and sex, and are aggregated into households. This allows more realistic simulations of population dynamics within the Long House Valley of Arizona from AD 800 to 1350 than are possible in the original model. The parts of this model that are directly derived from the AA model are based on Janssen’s 1999 Netlogo implementation of the model; the code for all extensions and adaptations in the model described here (the Artificial Long House Valley (ALHV) model) have been written by the authors. The AA model included only ideal and homogeneous “individuals” who do not participate in the population processes (e.g., birth and death)–these processes were assumed to act on entire households only. The ALHV model incorporates actual individual agents and all demographic processes affect these individuals. Individuals are aggregated into households that participate in annual agricultural and demographic cycles. Thus, the ALHV model is a combination of individual processes (birth and death) and household-level processes (e.g., finding suitable agriculture plots).

As is the case for the AA model, the ALHV model makes use of detailed archaeological and paleoenvironmental data from the Long House Valley and the adjacent areas in Arizona. It also uses the same methods as the original model (from Janssen’s Netlogo implementation) to estimate annual maize productivity of various agricultural zones within the valley. These estimates are used to determine suitable locations for households and farms during each year of the simulation.

Geographic Expansion Model (GEM)

Sean Bergin | Published Friday, February 28, 2020

The purpose of this model is to explore the importance of geographic factors to the settlement choices of early Neolithic agriculturalists. In the model, each agriculturalist spreads to one of the best locations within a modeler specified radius. The best location is determined by choosing either one factor such as elevation or slope; or by ranking geographic factors in order of importance.

Displaying 10 of 33 results agriculture clear search

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