Modeling Landscape Dynamics With Biodiversity Ecology And Social Aspects

Abstract

Landscapes are the composition of dynamic components of complex ecological, economic, and cultural elements on which human and other life forms depend directly. Landscape dynamics driven by land use land cover (LULC) changes due to anthropogenic activities are affecting ecology, biodiversity, hydrological regime, and hence people s livelihood. There has been increasing apprehensions about environmental degradation, depletion of natural resources due to uncontrolled anthropogenic activities, and its consequences on long-term sustainability of socio-economic systems around the world. This necessitates an understanding of landscape dynamics and the visualization of likely changes for evolving appropriate strategies for prudent management of natural resources. Modeling of forest cover changes offers to incorporate human decision making on land use in a systematic and spatially explicit way through an accumulation of land use choices, social interaction, and adaptation at various levels. Several models developed by the research community so far has largely been utilized to evaluate the empirical studies, explore theoretical aspects of particular systems rather than forecasting their effectiveness across the various landscapes representing bio-physical dissimilarities. Hence, there is a need to demonstrate an appropriate modeling technique, that captures the current degradation in an effective way as compared with the traditional agent-based or non-agent based land use change modeling techniques. newlineIn this regard, the objectives of current research are to understand and model the spatiotemporal patterns of landscape dynamics in the Uttara Kannada district of Central Western Ghats. This involves, (i) developing an appropriate modeling framework incorporating the spatiotemporal changes in the landscape at the regional level; (ii) implementing a hybrid model to capture the changes at the landscape level by integrating bio-ecological aspects with socio-economic growth; (iii) evaluating the environmental conditions