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academic2024Case study

EcoSim

an agent-based model of deforestation and climate impact on wildlife

What happens to wildlife when the forest disappears?

A NetLogo agent-based model of how deforestation and climate variables change animal behaviour and population dynamics — habitat loss, migration, birth and death — with sliders for deforestation rate, climate severity and species resilience.

RoleSimulation developer
My partSolo · coursework
Year2024
StatusCase study

What I did

Built with

Model

The world is a grid of patches — forest, cleared land, habitat — and a population of animal agents that move, feed, reproduce and die according to what their patch and the climate allow. Deforestation removes forest patches at a configurable rate; climate variables shift temperature and rainfall, which change patch productivity. Animals respond by migrating toward remaining habitat, and population plots show the lag between habitat loss and population collapse.

What it shows

Emergence: no rule says “populations crash when forest falls below a threshold”, yet that is what the runs produce, and the threshold moves with the resilience slider. It was a first exercise in translating a real system into agents and rules and watching what the rules imply.