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Organizers: Jennifer Koch, Geography & Environmental Sustainability - University of Oklahoma Monica Dorning, Geosciences and Environmental Change Science Center - U.S. Geological Survey Derek van Berkel, Center for Geospatial Analytics - North Carolina State University Integrated Modeling for the Analysis of Socio-Ecological Systems Research in the field of modeling and simulation of land systems has made considerable progress over the last decades. In recent years, the focus of land systems analysis has shifted from a detailed representation of spatial heterogeneity to the relationships between human decision making and biophysical conditions. This can partially be attributed to the progress made in the theoretical foundations for modeling of human decision making in socio-ecological systems, and specifically land systems. While being the approach of choice for including spatial heterogeneity in land systems models, Cellular Automata (CA) have a limited capability for representing human drivers of change. Hence, the popularity of integrated modeling approaches has increased, enabling incorporation of land change processes in simulation of likely future landscape patterns. By including these processes, land scientists are poised to offer greater insights into the causes, consequences and solutions of multiple land use issues including climate change, urbanization and food security. For the proposed session, we invite presentations focusing on hybrid approaches to modeling and simulation of socio-ecological systems and especially land systems. We will address the challenges and the possibilities of integrating System Dynamics and agent-based modeling approaches with CA. Following Voinov & Shugart's 2013 paper on "'Integronsters', integral and integrated modeling", we expect the presenters to cover usefulness, geometry, scale, complexity, as well as underlying ontology of their modeling approaches. In collaboration with the presenters and the audience, we hope to close the proposed session with a discussion of the underlying concepts of the model integration and the development of best practices of model integration for land systems science. Please submit your abstract through the US-IALE 2017 abstract submission system (http://usiale.org/baltimore2017/abstract-submission) and select "Integrated modeling for the analysis of socio-ecological systems" for the Symposia option. Jennifer AM Koch, Ph.D. Assistant Professor | The University of Oklahoma Department of Geography and Environmental Sustainability 100 E Boyd St | SEC Suite 510 | Norman, OK 73019 Skype: koch.jennifer_2 | Phone: +1 (541) 908-3914
