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Amaz

Comparing different strategies of land use and their consequences in terms of
Environmental Services in the Amazon

  • Pierre BOMMEL (Cirad - PUC-Rio),
  • René POCCARD (Cirad - Embrapa CPATU),
  • Amaury BENDAHAN (Embrapa-Roraima),
  • Emilie COUDEL (Cirad - Embrapa CPATU)

Purpose of the Model

Amaz is an Agent-Based Model (ABM) which objective is to assess scenarios associated with the Crop-Livestock-Forest integration in the Amazon. The different scenarios allow comparing different strategies of land use and the consequences in terms of Environmental Services. The indicators of comparison aim at weigh up the different ways to:
- Reduce the environmental impacts of agricultural activities;
- Preserve riparian forests and legal reserves;
- Restore degraded areas, creating conditions for new production and decreasing the need for deforestation of new areas;
- Creating jobs, income, and better conditions to family farms.

Designed to operate at the farm level, the goal of Amaz is to evaluate the consequences of various forms of land use. From a given initial state, the producers apply their agricultural practices, leading to different forms of landscape.
Focused on the practices (“business as usual” and new practices designed in the project), we compare various land use strategies.

What scenarios?

We define four scenarios to be compared:

  1. Business as usual
  2. Respect the law
  3. Maximize the provision of environmental services
  4. Maximize the production by intensification.

These scenarios are compared by applying for each one, four land use strategies corresponding to four types of actors. Each type prefers a management pattern as follows:

  1. Prioritize livestock
  2. Prioritize perennial crops
  3. Prioritize agriculture
  4. Diversified (annual rotations on priorities: year 1 = tree crop farmer, year 2 = grower, year 3 = breeder, etc.).

A scenario is designed as a set of modules inserted into basic activities and that will affect the practices. These modules are:

  1. Conservation agriculture (no tillage)
  2. Intensification of livestock (a. Pasture and/or b. Pasture and herd)
  3. Sustainable forest management
  4. Avoided deforestation (even if not below the clearing rate authorized)
  5. Agro-forestry
  6. Set-aside land (bare fallow for soil regeneration)
  7. Stop the use of fire to clean the pasture.
  8. Accelerated recovery of environmental liability
  9. sylvo-pastoralism

Scenarios 0 are a set of "control" scenarios. For those, there is neither legal restriction, nor payment for Environmental Services.

Scenarios 1, "Respect the law" Modules 6 and 7

Calculation of environmental liabilities and creating a recovery plan (30 years to recover the liability) based on the module 6 (bare fallow) when above the limit of the legal reserve (LR) and when the area of permanent protection (APP, defined by IBAMA, the Brazilian Institute of the Environment). If below the limit, the agent can deforest without exceeding 50% of deforestation, and without clearing the APPs.
Implementation of module 7: the agent stops the use of fire to clear its pastures, but it authorized to slash and burn out of the legal reserve.

Scenarios 2: "Maximize the provision of environmental services" Module 2 3, 4, 5, 7 and 8. (Not yet implemented)

Scenarios 3: "Maximize the intensification of production." Modules 1, 2, 5 and 7 (Not yet implemented)

(As the diagrams have been designed with brazilians colleagues, they are in portuguese)

Principle of simulation

The principle of Amaz is crossing two dynamics: the natural evolution of the vegetation (and soil) over time, and the activities of the producer managing its farm. Thus, depending on the initial state and the producer practices, the system evolves in a direction that can be measured by ecological and economic indicators. For example, we measure the area of forest or its fragmentation, the biodiversity and the biomass (Carbon), but also the family's income, the number of days worked out, amount of hired labor, ...

Model description

Visit the description page to get a full description of Amaz.

First results

Visit the Results' page to see the main results of Amaz.

Software

You can download the Cormas model source code.

A quite similar report in portugues is available.

For more information, contact the corresponding author

 

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