Environmental and Agricultural Modelling

Environmental and Agricultural Modelling
Integrated Approaches for Policy Impact Assessment
Brouwer, Floor M.; van Ittersum, Martin (Eds.)
1st Edition., 2010, XX, 325 p., Hardcover

Agriculture increasingly faces the challenge of balancing its multiple functions in a sustainable way. Integrated assessment and modelling (IAM) can provide insight into the potential impacts of policy changes. However, concepts to address the wide range of issues and functions typical for agriculture are still scarce. Environmental and Agricultural Modelling reviews and presents our current understanding of integrated and working tools to assess and compute, ex-ante, alternative agricultural and environmental policy options, allowing:
1. Analysis at the full range of scales (farm to European Union and global) whilst focusing on the most important issues emerging at each scale;
2. Analysis of the environmental, economic and social contributions of agricultural systems towards sustainable rural development and rural viability;
3. Analysis of a broad range of issues and agents of change, such as climate change, environmental policies, rural development options, effects of an enlarging EU, international competition, and effects on developing countries.

Contents

List of contributors.- List of acronyms and abbreviations.- Preface.- 1. Introduction.- Part I Indicators and concepts in practice.- 2. Assessment of multifunctionality and jointness of production.-3. The institutional dimension in policy assessment.- Part II Advancements in modelling, data and software.- 4. A component-based framework for simulating agricultural production and externalities.- 5. A generic farming system simulator.- 6. Visualising changes in agricultural landscapes.- 7. A biophysical typology in agri-environmental modelling. – 8. The use of regional typologies in the assessment of farms’ performance. -9. A web-based software system for model integration in impact assessments of agricultural and environmental policies.- Part III Use and extensions of integrated assessment modelling.- 10. Evaluating integrated assessment tools for policy support.- 11. A comparison of CAPRI and SEAMLESS-IF as integrated modelling systems. – 12. Science - policy interfaces in impact assessment procedures.- 13. Economic principles of monetary valuation in evaluation studies.