Towards an integrated ecological-economic land-use change model

Abstract

Land-use changes have transformed tropical landscapes through- out the past decades dramatically. We describe here an ecological- economic land-use change model to provide an integrated, exploratory tool to analyze how tropical land use and land-use change affect eco- logical and socio-economic functions. The guiding question of the model is what kind of landscape mosaic can improve the ensemble of ecosystem functioning, biodiversity and economic benefit based on the synergies and trade-offs that we have to account for. The economic submodel simulates smallholder land-use management de- cisions based on a profit maximization assumption and a Leontief production function. Each household determines factor inputs for all household fields and decides about land-use change based on avail- able wealth. The ecological submodel includes a simple account of carbon sequestration in above- and belowground vegetation. Initial- ized with realistic or artificial land use maps, the ecological-economic model will advance our understanding of the mechanisms underlying the trade-offs and synergies of ecological and economic functions in tropical landscapes.