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

与热带森林砍伐有关的土地利用和土地覆盖变化的特点是复杂的，因为系统的人类和自然组成部分之间的反馈产生了具有紧急性质的动态轨迹。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产生系统动态，从而限制未来人类住区的轨迹。厄瓜多尔东北部的热带雨林是一些不同利益攸关方之间复杂互动的领域：(A)从该国其他地区迁入并在家庭农场定居的自发殖民者；(B)新兴社区和市场中心，他们巩固了服务，并为殖民者提供非农业就业；(C)受到商业性农业崛起、其领土内的石油生产和向消费型经济过渡影响的土著人民；(D)在殖民者和土著地区修建公路和铺设石油开采管道的石油开采者；(E)为在快速变化的前沿环境中阻碍发展和保留生物多样性而建立的养护和保护区。这片土地上最广泛的变化是农业殖民者带来的变化，他们在石油勘探后移民到该地区，在1970年左右开始沿着石油公司修建的道路定居。与该区域其他利益攸关方的相互关系是复杂的，这是由于不断发展的前沿环境的空间格局和变化速度之间的不同、往往相互冲突的利益和反馈。反馈通过系统动力学约束甚至逆转了LULCC中的一些原始更改。来自当地非线性反馈的特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动态的系统，其特征是阶段变化。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，土地利用、土地利用的变化和变化对地球系统的脆弱性和可持续性具有重大影响。人类-环境系统具有特征的循环动力学，这些循环动力学在层次结构中链接到更快和更慢的周期。改变一个系统的周期通常是反馈交叉扩展的周期。人们所依赖的土地利用、土地利用、土地利用和土地利用的变化可能会迅速发生变化，并转向无法支持不断增长的人口及其活动的情况。决定它们在这种条件下的反应的系统的特征被概括为弹性。利用复杂性理论来分析LULCC系统动力学在一个重要的生态前沿将有助于更好地理解其复原力和未来。综合模拟建模方法将利用收集的人种学数据以及家庭和社区调查，作为重点统计基础，为代表主要行为者土地使用决策的基于主体的模型(ABM)创建规则，并将提供模拟过去和未来时期土地利用/土地利用的参数。该项目得到了2004财年环境中生物复杂性特别竞赛的一个奖项的支持，该竞赛的重点是自然和人类耦合系统的动态变化。

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.