ECO 581 - Modeling Sustainability

This skills-based course in the modeling of social-ecological systems, focuses providing students all the conceptual and computational tools they need to design, modify, test and build agent-based models of socio-ecological systems. It draws inspiration and theoretical perspectives from research on common pool resource dynamics, human cooperation, evolutionary game theory, and complex adaptive systems. Students will use the free, cross-platform modeling system called NetLogo to explore the dynamics of models, critique these models, modify and extend them. The semester’s work will be cumulative, and build toward student-authored socio-ecological systems models. Students will be encouraged to connect their models to either local socio-ecological systems or to socio-ecological research conducted on campus.

Prerequisites: Permission.

Credits: 3