Developing an Agent-Based Model for Peatland Subsidies in Lapland
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Journal Title
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Perustieteiden korkeakoulu |
Master's thesis
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Authors
Date
2022-01-25
Department
Major/Subject
Systems and Operations Research
Mcode
SCI3055
Degree programme
Master’s Programme in Mathematics and Operations Research
Language
en
Pages
38
Series
Abstract
The agricultural industry, as the biggest land use industry, has a large effect on both sequestration and emissions of greenhouse gasses. This thesis responds to the need to analyse peatlands in agriculture and thus builds a development the Dutch agent based SAGA model applied and aimed to evaluate the impact of different peatland subsidies in Lapland, Finland. Modifications include a utility based optimisation of multiple subsidy options after the decision to convert land has been undertaken. After the model is analysed, further solutions are suggested to increase the robustness of the conclusions and the applicability of this method to peatlands in particular. Ultimately, it is concluded that the model predicts realistic farmer behaviour, however for the results to be generalisable the input data should be much more precise. This can be achieved by using a submodel such as the CoupModel to calculate the specific emissions for management techniques as well as the local conditions. It is also shown that when there is a wide range of subsidy choices, more land is converted – as there is more likely to be a subsidy that applies to the specification of the site. This result shows the importance of nature based solutions rather than area based subsidies, as nature based solutions can account for different advantageous aspects, for example water availability and biodiversity, of sites without needing to define multiple subsidies with slightly different fixed conditions.Description
Supervisor
Oliveira, FabricioThesis advisor
Rämö, JanneLehtonen, Heikki
Keywords
agent based models, subsidy, peatland, optimisation, climate targets