Global models of human decision-making for land-based mitigation and adaptation assessment

Understanding the links between land-use change (LUC) and climate change is vital in developing effective land-based climate mitigation policies and adaptation measures. Although mitigation and adaptation are human-mediated processes, current global-scale modelling tools do not account for societal learning and other human responses to environmental change. We propose the agent functional type (AFT) method to advance the representation of these processes, by combining socio-economics (agent-based modelling) with natural sciences (dynamic global vegetation models). Initial AFT-based simulations show the emergence of realistic LUC patterns that reflect known LUC processes, demonstrating the potential of the method to enhance our understanding of the role of people in the Earth system.