In this webinar you will hear about exciting new advances in social simulation and computational modelling that can support better representation of human behaviour in the land system. Prof. Robert Axtell will present new work on large-scale agent based models in social science, Dr. Brian Mac Namee will describe the use of machine learning and ABM in computer game design, and Prof. Thomas Clemen will present a simulation platform capable of modelling vast multi-agent systems.
The webinar will conclude with a discussion among presenters and attendants about how these advances can be used to develop a new generation of land system science models.
Please note: Attendance is limited to the first 100 participants who join the meeting the day of the event, regardless of registration order. We will send the webinar materials and a recording link to all registrants after the event, regardless of attendance.
Overview: Food and bioenergy demands of a growing global population and societies’ changing lifestyles are increasing the pressures on land and ecosystems. Further pressures arise from the demands on land resources for other ecosystem services, and the variable (often negative) impacts of climate change on plant productivity. These multiple, often seemingly conflicting demands on land and ecosystems are a considerablestumbling-block for achieving sustainability goals. The Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) will run an ONLINE international Summer School on the topic of land use and ecosystems change between the 9.-20. August 2021. The summer school courses will introduce students to a wide range of issues related to ecosystem functioning, socio-ecological systems and land use change by covering:
Both the biophysical and human processes and concepts needed to understand the broader issues of socio-ecological systems. This will include, amongst others, ecosystem functioning, biodiversity, ecosystem services, resilience, vulnerability, risk management, tipping-points, sustainability and related concepts in the field. We will also explore current understanding of how environmental change (both physical and human changes in the environment) will affect socio-ecological systems. This will include content on international assessment processes such as the IPCC and IPBES.
Different aspects of land use change processes across geographic scales and for the past, present and future drivers of change. This will include, for example, land abandonment, extensification vs. intensification, deforestation, the role of social networks and knowledge diffusion, the role of pollinators and land management. There will be a focus on land use change assessment methods, including the role of observational data (e.g. from remote sensing and other sources) and land use modelling approaches using interactive exercises and case studies.
Format: The summer school will include a mix of webinars, group and individual exercises, and student presentations. The course is open to students currently studying for an MSc or PhD degree with backgrounds in environmental sciences, geography, environmental economics, meteorology and ecology.
Lecturers (KIT): Prof. Dr. Almut Arneth, Prof. Dr. Mark Rounsevell, Dr. Calum Brown, Dr. Richard Fuchs, Dr. Sam Rabin, Dr. Heera Lee, Dr. Penelope Whitehorn, Dr. Anita Bayer, Dr. Bumsuk Seo and Karina Winkler.
Applications: Applications are open until 30 April 2021. Please send your CV and a letter of motivation (limited to one page) on one document, signed by your supervisor to: sylvia.kratz@kit.edu
Overview The Land Use and Climate Change Research Group of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (https://landchange.imk-ifu.kit.edu/) is seeking a postdoctoral researcher in the field of land use change modelling. You will work within a newly funded research project on Integrating socio‐technological and ecological land‐based solutions for climate change mitigation in the food and energy systems (ISoTEc‐Land). Your specific roles will be to contribute to the application of a novel agent-based model of land use change at the global scale, and the development of a new model of large-scale, solar panel placement. The position is available from 1 May 2021 for 18 months, with the potential for extension beyond this period subject to performance and funding. The position will also entail some contribution to teaching and group administration. The position holder will be located at KITs attractive Alpine Campus in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany. Salary will be equivalent to the public service TV-L EG13, depending on qualifications and experience.
Qualifications You will have a PhD degree in a relevant discipline (or equivalent experience) and strong quantitative skills in computer modelling and the analysis of large-scale datasets in the environmental sciences (GIS experience alone is insufficient). Experience with statistical analysis, scenario analysis, ecological economics, computational social sciences and/or computer programming is desirable. You will need to have proficiency in the English language, both spoken and in writing. Further information can be obtained from Prof. Mark Rounsevell (mark.rounsevell@kit.edu).
Applications Applications should be sent by email to Prof Mark Rounsevell (mark.rounsevell@kit.edu) by Friday22 January 2021, quoting the reference, ISoTEc-Land. Applications should be submitted within a single PDF document that includes your CV, publications list (with citations), a short (1-2 page) letter of motivation and contact details for 2 referees. The motivation letter should clearly state how your research interests relate to the job specification provided above. Applications that are incomplete or do not address these criteria will not be considered.
Interviews will be held remotely on Monday 1 February 2021.
KIT strives to achieve gender balance at all levels of employment. We therefore particularly encourage female candidates to apply for this position. With appropriate qualifications, applications from persons with handicaps are treated preferentially.
The AIMES/GLP Working Group on Large-scale Behavioural Models of Land Use Change held its first webinar, featuring Dr. Elke Weber and Dr. Peter Verburg discussing whether the idea of large-scale behavioural modelling is realistic, in November 2020. Elke Weber is a professor of Psychology and Public Affairs at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs. Dr. Weber’s specialty is in judgment and decision-making under risk and uncertainty. Her research has investigated psychologically appropriate ways to measure and model individual and cultural differences in risk taking, specifically in risky financial situations and environmental decision making and policy. Peter Verburg is a professor of Environmental Spatial Analysis and leads the Environmental Geography group that is part of the Institute for Environmental Studies, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Prof. Verburg has established a leading position in the field of land use analysis and modelling. He has developed and applied a wide range of methods to analyze spatial patterns of land use at scales from local to global. Methods used in his research originate from different disciplines, including social sciences (interviews, participatory workshops, multi-level statistics, foresight and scenario studies), econometrics (efficiency analysis, spatial econometrics), geography (accessibility analysis, spatial modelling, remote sensing) and earth sciences (biogeochemical modelling).
Webinar: Friday, 13 November 2020 at 3pm (CET) Register to receive Zoom connection information
The AIMES/GLP Working Group on Large-scale Behavioural Models of Land Use Change is pleased to invite you to the first webinar of their new series. In this webinar you will hear about research efforts led by Dr. Peter Verburg that are pushing the bounds of modelling to represent human decision-making at continental and global extents. You will also be introduced to novel psychological frameworks developed by Dr. Elke Weber that could help make this possible and reveal new challenges. Together, their work provides new insights into large-scale behavioural modelling of land use change. The webinar will conclude with a discussion of the reasons for developing such models, key issues that need to be considered in their design, and approaches that have particular promise for producing a new generation of models.
Click here to register. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting. Please note: Attendance is limited to the first 100 participants who join the meeting the day of the event, regardless of registration order. We will send the webinar materials and a recording link to all registrants after the event, regardless of attendance.
SESMO (Socio-Environmental Systems Modelling www.sesmo.org) is an open access journal with the objective to progress our understanding, learning and decision making on major socio-environmental issues using advances in model-grounded processes that engage with institutional and governance contexts, cross-sectoral and scale challenges, and stakeholder perspectives.
SESMO is launching a call for a thematic issue on large-scale behavioural models of land use change. We are calling for contributions of scholars intending to present their latest research results on this topic.
The expected deadline for the submission of the contribution is the end of June 2021.
The Editor-in-chief is Tony Jakeman, and the guest editors of this special issue are:
Follow the link to get more information on the scope and objectives of this call for papers
Outline: Human activity is fundamentally reshaping the dynamics of the Earth System, with consequences that pose existential challenges to societies and ecosystems. Efforts to address these challenges of the Anthropocene era increasingly rely on computational models that simulate the cross-scale interactions of social, economic and environmental processes. For instance, land use and land use change, from field to global scales, result from decisions taken by individuals and shaped by social institutions, which rely on natural systems dynamics at various scales. However, today’s analyses of future changes in the Earth System provide scant detail about the basic processes underlying these changes. Human agency is reduced to economic determinism and scenario-based assumptions in selecting between land use options, while ecosystem dynamics are approximated at highly aggregate levels that obscure crucial interactions. These shortcomings seriously undermine the search for realistic, robust strategies to mitigate or adapt to global environmental change.
A number of different approaches have been proposed for better understanding and modelling of cross-scale dynamics in coupled social-ecological systems. In particular, a clear need has been identified by the research community for a new generation of large-scale (continental to global) land use models that are based on human behavior, agency and behaviorally-rich representation of decision-making processes. Such models could be linked with large-scale biophysical models as well as mechanistic ecological models, but must first overcome the difficulties of identifying and simulating key cross-scale socio-ecological processes. Particularly challenging is the question of how to upscale locally-based models of human decision-making or whether to try and create “models of everywhere”. Only once these methodological challenges have been overcome will we be able to identify realistic pathways to sustainability that account for fundamental processes in human and natural systems in uncertain future conditions.
For this Thematic Issue, we welcome contributions dedicated to the better understanding and modelling of temporal or spatial scales in land use dynamics. These contributions can present theoretical or empirical analyses, methodological contributions, or relevant model developments, and will together build towards a robust agenda for future research in this field. Articles in the Thematic Issue could focus on:
Case study-based empirical research on land use dynamics, explicitly tackling different social scales;
Methodological contributions on the investigation and modelling of cross-scale dynamics (up-scaling and down-scaling methods);
Modelling of land use dynamics across scales and at large (continental-global) scales accounting for human agency;
New methods to link models covering different scales and human or natural systems;
Approaches to integrate behaviourally rich representation of human agency in large-scale models;
Representation of an interplay between individual decisions and social institutions (formal or informal) in land use change models;
Up-scaling of heterogeneity of individual decision strategies and local institutional contexts from case studies to larger geographical scales;
Overview:
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