Development of an integrated generic model for multi-scale assessment of the impacts of agro-ecosystems on major ecosystem services in West Africa.

This paper presents an integrated model assessing the impacts of climate change, agro-ecosystem and demographic transition patterns on major ecosystem services in West-Africa along a partial overview of economic aspects (poverty reduction, food self-sufficiency and income generation). The model is based on an agent-based model associated with a soil model and multi-scale spatial model. The resulting Model for West-Africa Agro-Ecosystem Integrated Assessment (MOWASIA) is ecologically generic, meaning it is designed for all sudano-sahelian environments but may then be used as an experimentation facility for testing different scenarios combining ecological and socioeconomic dimensions.

Effect of small-scale heterogeneity of prey and hunter distributions on the sustainability of bushmeat hunting.

Bushmeat is the main source of protein and the most important source of income for rural people in the Congo Basin, but intensive hunting of bushmeat species is also a major concern for conservationists. Although spatial heterogeneity in hunting effort and in prey populations at the landscape level plays a key role in the sustainability of hunted populations, the role of small-scale heterogeneity within a village hunting territory in the sustainability of hunting has remained understudied. We built a spatially explicit multiagent model to capture the dynamics of a system in which hunters and preys interact within a village hunting territory.