PLAN104 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Path Dependence, Carbon Sequestration, Intelligent Agent
8 Jun 2016
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Document Summary
Coupled modelling of complex human-natural systems: applications to land- use change. The lecture mainly dealt with complex systems and modelling human-environment interaction. Human land-change has a negative affect on environment and ecosystems. The natural environment also affects human behaviours and decisions. There is a feedback between the systems (information and resource flows); it is incomplete (doesn"t provide the right signals or incentives for sustainable management). It can be useful to model these systems to figure out incentives, since they are complex (lots of variation and feedbacks) Landscapes are affected by human"s use; increase of human appropriation of land causes degradation in land-based natural capital, which causes a decline in ecosystems services (eg: water purification) Ecosystem services refer to the flows of goods and services from ecosystems that provide life-sustaining benefits to humans. Examples of ecosystem services generated by forestland use: air and water purification, temperature and climate stabilization, provision of genetic, species, and ecosystem level biodiversity, nutrient cycling, carbon sequestration.
