A Model and Simulation Framework for Exploring Potential Impacts of Land Use Policies: The Brazilian Cerrado Case

Land use and cover change (LUCC) research is important to support insightful management of Earth´s land use to avoid irreversible damage. However, LUCC is a complex process that relates the interaction between natural and social systems at different temporal and spatial scales. Nevertheless, the representation of different interaction patterns through agent-based modeling and multi-agent systems can contribute to decision support for sustainability that are essential to a better understanding of real environmental problems, including social, economic and physical aspects. Thus, this article presents the use of a Multi-agent System for Environmental Simulation (MASE) for exploring potential impacts of land use policies. MASE is a freeware multi-agent model system to simulate LUCC dynamics that is illustrated with the Brazilian Cerrado case. Considering the experimental results, we consider that MASE represents an interesting alternative for LUCC decision support.