Agent-Based Simulations of Household Decision Making and Land Use Change near Altamira, Brazil

Individuals who influence decisions regarding the use of land, operate within a complex environment comprised of interacting elements that include both natural systems and human institutions. Individually, the elements of the natural and human systems that influence land-use decisions may be very complex. Within natural systems, dynamic processes, such as the hydrological cycle, and the distribution of biophysical resources, such as soil fertility, influence land-use decision making. Elements of an individual’s institutional environment can also influence the options and incentives that are available to an individual, and thus the land-use decisions that thhey make. Understanding the nature of these complex processes and interactions is a nontrivial task. However, agent-based simulation offers researchers a tool to better understand the nature of these complex systems. The recent development of computer simulation technologies by social scientists has provided a tool for not only predicting social phenomena, but also for better understanding the nature of these human systems. Replicative validity is not the goal of many social simulation efforts. Instead, researchers have focused on developing relatively simple simulations as tools for understanding the properties of social systems and the way in which interactions between actors at the local level results in the emergence of behaviors or phenomena at the global level. In this role, simulation becomes a tool for evaluating assumptions and exercising theories of action. Many of the techniques applied to social simulation can be traced back to earlier developments in the physical or natural sciences. For example, computer simulation has a relatively long history in the natural sciences in applications related to fisheries, forest environments, and watersheds. But recent advances in computer hardware and software technologies have made these technologies accessible to social scientists. Recently, we have seen simulation efforts that have included models of not only the natural system in question, but also the human system with which it interacts. In fields such as anthropology and resource management , human systems simulations are being developed which directly address the actions of human individuals or groups as they interact with a natural system. This approach to simulation is pursued in this chapter.