Growing artificial societies: social science from the bottom up
Growing artificial societies: social science from the bottom up
Environmental Modelling & Software
MABS'09 Proceedings of the 10th international conference on Multi-agent-based simulation
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Quantifying cumulative environmental impacts (cumulative effects) is challenging due to complex dynamics of natural and human systems interacting. Cumulative effects in social-ecological systems are examples of emergent properties of complex systems, which arise from interactions between multiple resource users. The article presents a multi-agent-based simulation model designed to quantify cumulative effects in the case of interactions between forestry and hunting. The specific contributions of the paper are a) quantification of emergent properties in natural resource management systems, b) evaluation of different road decommissioning policies and the effect on game population sustainability, c) calibration of agent behaviours from numerous empirical studies. Preference weightings in the utility function of hunter agents are calibrated from stated and revealed preference studies of Canadian hunters. Simulations explore moose population sustainability under various forestry access management policies and with different hunter preference parameter configurations. Contrary to the intent of access management, earlier road decommissioning is found to negatively impact overall sustainability of game populations due to cumulative effects of aggregate hunter behaviour. Altering agents' preferences for travel cost, game populations, and hunter congestion result in dramatically different spatial outcomes for where game extirpations occur. Certain preference parameter settings create resonance between hunting pressure and game population growth, forming self-organized and persistent spatial resource use patterns.