| Land use in tropical regions such as the Sierra Madre in the Philippines is influenced not only by proximate actors such as farmers or loggers but also by many others such as government agencies, NGO's, absentee landlords, banks and politicians, who exert many influences on the proximate actors and on each other. In order to "socialize the pixel", i.e. to maken the connection between social science and the GIS-based land use models of geography, the ensemble of these actors can be represented in a multi-agent model. The present project aims to do so in an empirically and theoretically valid manner, following the basic tructure f the 'Action-in-Context' framework, and connect this model to the spatially explicit, CLUE-type land use models developed in other two projects of the program. As is the case with the program as a whole, the region of focus will be the Sierra Madre in the Philippines, characterized by a high diversity in land use types and processes of change. The project will use an available state-of-the-art multi-agent modelling platform , adapt this so that it comes closer to social-scientific theory of agency and inter-agent connectivity, and validate the model through field work. Interactions with the other projects in the program will concern, inter alia, the exchange of field data, the formulation of exogenous scenarios and the upscalling of the model to the meso |
