Modeling spatio-temporal dynamics of households, habitats, and forests: a case study in Wolong Nature
Reserve (China)

Li An (1)*, Marc Linderman(1), and Jianguo Liu(1)


(1) Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, Michigan State University, 13 Natural Resources Building, 
East Lansing, MI 48824-1222, USA.

* Corresponding author—current address: School of Natural Resources and Environment, 2004 Dana Natural
Resources Building, The University of Michigan, 430 E. University, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1115. 
Phone: (734) 615-4897; 
email: address@hidden

Traditional top-down approaches (e.g., state variable approach) to studying wildlife habitat often 
ignore individual-level information about the human population of interest, especially at household 
and/or individual level, and often cannot capture or explain some key processes.  This study reports
 on an agent-based spatial model that addresses this issue. The rapidly growing rural population in 
the Wolong Nature Reserve for giant pandas (China) follows a traditional rural lifestyle, in which 
fuelwood consumption has been the main driver for panda habitat degradation. Following the life 
history of individual persons and households, this model equips the individual and household agents 
with “knowledge” about themselves, other agents, and the environment (topography, forests, etc), and 
allows them to interact with each other and the environment based on a set of rules obtained from our
 fieldwork. The agents and forests change and “talk” to each other over time and space, resulting in 
emergent human and habitat dynamics. Aside from providing insights to panda habitat conservation, this
 model may provide wildlife researchers with a useful tool to study how habitat patterns change over 
time and space as the local people, households, and forests evolve and interact with each other.

Keywords: agent-based modeling, households, human demographics, giant panda conservation