Dear ECOLOG-L subscribers, [Please send this message to people with potential interest]
***Symposium on modeling human behaviors/decisions and their impacts on the environment*
At The International Society for Ecological Modelling Global Conference 2016 to be held at Towson University, Baltimore, USA, from 8-12 May 2016.
Symposium Abstract: Increasingly humans play an essential role in changing the structure and function of many earth systems, causing various environmental consequences to a degree that virtually there is no pristine place on the earth that is completely "natural" and free of human impact. On the other hand, such environmental consequences may in turn affect future human decisions and behavior. However, understanding / modeling human behaviors/decisions and their interactions with the corresponding environment is still a combination of science and art, and many researchers develop or use agent based models (ABM) to untangle puzzles related to the human decision-environment change loops. A very useful framework in this context is the coupled human and natural systems (CHANS) approach, addressing many complexity aspects such as feedback, nonlinearity, heterogeneity, and emergence. In light of complexity theory and its application in CHANS, this session brings together agent-based models developed under different CHANS contexts, aiming to distill commonalities from place-specific characteristics. This session aims to bring to attention of the related scientific community, and advocates, that some generic protocols and/or architectures be developed in the context of the specific domain of research questions. We hope that our discussions and efforts on how to model human decisions and their consequences in CHANS will not only advance CHANS theories, but also bring forward new opportunities in advancing complexity theory and agent-based modeling. If you are interested in presenting your work at the symposium, please submit your abstract by the extended deadline October 30, 2015: http://www.isemconference.com/submit-abstract.asp, and optionally email your abstract to Dr. Li An (symposium chair) at [email protected].
Best regards, Li
