%0 Journal Article
%T An Agent-Based Reasoning of Impacts of Regional Climate Changes on Land Use Changes in the Three-River Headwaters Region of China
%A Tao Zhang
%A Jinyan Zhan
%A Juan Huang
%A Rui Yu
%A Chenchen Shi
%J Advances in Meteorology
%D 2013
%I Hindawi Publishing Corporation
%R 10.1155/2013/248194
%X The land surface in Three-River Headwaters Region (TRHR), a typical ecological fragile zone of China, is quite sensitive to the climate changes which will destabilize certain ecosystem services valuable to the entire nation and neighboring countries. This study aimed to analyze the impacts of climate changes and agentsĄŻ adaptive behaviors on the regional land use changes with the agent based model (ABM). First, the main agents were extracted according to the production resources endowments and socioeconomic background. Then the agentsĄŻ land use behaviors were analyzed and parameterized. Thereafter, the ABM model was built to simulate the impacts of the climate changes on the regional land use changes and agentsĄŻ economic benefits. The results showed that the land use changes were mainly characterized by the increase of grassland and decrease of unused land area. Besides, the agents would get more wealth under the scenario without climate changes in the long term, even though the total income is lower than that under the scenario with climate changes. In addition, the sensitivity analysis indicated that the model is sensitive to the climatic conditions, market price of agricultural and animal husbandry products, government subsidies, and cost control. 1. Introduction Both the global and regional climate changes have greatly undermined the terrestrial landscapes, ecological processes, and ecosystem services [1¨C4], which have subsequently threatened not only the human societies but also the natural environment itself by the recondite feedback effects [5¨C8]. There have been dramatic changes in the climatic conditions of China, which will continue to last for a long time in the future. The atmospheric temperature of China has increased by 0.5¨C0.8ĄăC in the 20th century, with the upper limit exceeding the global average level. Meanwhile, the precipitation has continuously decreased in northern part of China while increased greatly in the southern and southeast part of China. Additionally, the extreme climate and subsequent natural disasters have also showed a longitudinal distribution pattern. A number of researchers have reported the impacts of climate changes on various factors of the ecological and social systems [9, 10], such as terrestrial surface [10¨C12], the market price [13, 14], and externality of public goods and even the political negotiations among various stakeholders [15, 16]. Climate changes associated with human adaptive activities, especially the social agentsĄŻ decisions on land use, have exerted synergistic impacts on the land surface at
%U http://www.hindawi.com/journals/amete/2013/248194/