BE/CNH: Feedbacks Among Patterns and Processes of Land-Use and Land-Cover Dynamics in the Northern Ecuadorian Amazon

与热带森林砍伐相关的土地利用和土地覆盖变化（LULCC）的特点是复杂的，因为该系统的人类和自然成分之间的反馈创造了具有涌现特性的动态轨迹。最重要的反馈是与系统的空间结构有关的反馈。在这个跨学科的研究项目中，研究人员将调查厄瓜多尔热带雨林人类住区前沿的反馈如何创造限制人类住区未来轨迹的系统动力学。厄瓜多尔东北部的热带雨林是许多不同利益相关者之间复杂相互作用的地区：(a)从该国其他地区移民并在家庭农场定居的自发殖民者；(b)新出现的社区和市场中心，为殖民者提供综合服务和非农就业；(c)受到商业农业兴起、其领土内石油生产和向消费经济过渡影响的土著人民；(d)在殖民地和土著地区修建道路和铺设石油开采管道的石油开采者；(e)为了在迅速变化的前沿环境中阻碍发展和保持生物多样性而建立的养护和保护区。土地上最广泛的变化是由农业殖民者造成的，他们在石油勘探之后迁移到该地区，在1970年左右开始沿着石油公司修建的道路定居。与该区域其他利益相关者的相互关系是复杂的，这是由于空间格局和前沿环境变化速度之间不同的、往往相互冲突的利益和反馈造成的。反馈通过系统动力学限制甚至逆转了LULCC的一些原始变化。从局部非线性反馈中产生的属性限制了土地利用的演变模式，并产生了一个具有可识别的潜在未来替代状态和以相位变化为特征的动态系统。土地利用和土地覆盖的变化正在重塑地球生物圈，改变物种栖息地。因此，LULCC对地球系统的脆弱性和可持续性具有重要意义。人-环境系统具有特征的循环动力学，在一个层次上与更快和更慢的循环联系在一起。改变系统的循环往往是那些反馈跨尺度的循环。人们所依赖的LULCC动态可能受到迅速变化和转变的影响，无法支持不断增长的人口及其活动。系统在这种情况下决定其反应的特征被概括为弹性。利用复杂性理论分析生态前沿的LULCC系统动力学将更好地理解其弹性和未来。利用收集到的人种学数据和家庭和社区调查的综合模拟建模方法将作为一个集中的统计基础，为基于代理的模型（ABM）创建规则，该模型将代表关键行动者的土地使用决策，并将提供模拟过去和未来时期LULCC的参数。该项目得到了2004年度环境生物复杂性特别竞赛的支持，该竞赛侧重于自然和人类系统耦合动力学。

Land-use and land-cover change (LULCC) associated with tropical deforestation has been characterized as complex in that feedbacks between the human and natural components of the system create dynamic trajectories with emergent properties. The most important feedbacks are those related to the spatial structure of the system. In this interdisciplinary research project, the researchers will investigate how feedbacks at a frontier of human settlement in the Ecuadorian tropical rainforest create system dynamics that constrain the future trajectories of human settlement. The tropical rainforest of northeastern Ecuador is an area of complex interactions among a number of diverse stakeholders:(a) spontaneous colonists who have in-migrated from other regions of the country and settled on household farms; (b) newly emerging communities and market centers that have consolidated services and offer off-farm employment to colonists; (c) indigenous people who are affected by the rise of commercial agriculture, oil production within their territories, and a transition to a consumer-based economy; (d) oil exploiters who have built roads and laid pipelines for petroleum extraction in colonist and indigenous areas; and (e) conservation and protected areas established to impeded development and retain biodiversity in a rapidly transforming frontier environment. The most extensive changes on the land are those wrought by agricultural colonists who migrated to the region in the wake of oil exploration, settling along roads built by oil companies starting around 1970. Interrelationships with the other stakeholders in the region are complex, resulting from different, often conflicting, interests and feedbacks between spatial patterns and rates of change on the advancing frontier environment. Feedbacks constrain or even reverse some of the original changes in LULCC through system dynamics. Properties emerging from local non-linear feedbacks constrain the evolving patterns of land use and produce a system with identifiable potential future alternative states and dynamics characterized by phase changes.Land-use and land-cover change is reshaping the Earth's biosphere and altering species habitats. As a result LULCC has significant implication for the vulnerability and sustainability of earth systems. Human-environment systems have characteristic cyclic dynamics that are linked in a hierarchy to faster and slower cycles. The cycles that change a system are often those in which feedbacks cross scales. The LULCC dynamics on which people depend may be subject to rapid changes and shifts to situations that cannot support growing populations and their activities. The characteristics of systems that determine their responses in such conditions are summarized as resilience. The use of complexity theory to analyze LULCC system dynamics on an ecologically vital frontier will yield better understand its resilience and its future. An integrated simulation modeling approach that draws upon collected ethnographic data and a household and community survey will serve as a focused statistical base to create rules for an agent based model (ABM) that will represent the land use decision making of the key actors, and will provide parameters that simulate LULCC in the past and for future periods. This project is supported by an award resulting from the FY 2004 special competition in Biocomplexity in the Environment focusing on the Dynamics of Coupled Natural and Human Systems.