Agricultural practices affect the surrounding environment, while
societal choices influence decisions about agricultural production and land
management. To understand the implications of this interaction requires
knowledge of where agricultural production takes place and how decisions
concerning that production are made. In this model, spatial data were manipulated
within a geographic information system, while a multiple-attribute
decision-making methodology was used to represent the crop-selection
decisions made by agricultural producers. The attributes that went into these
decisions included the availability of suitable land, sufficient water, and a
crop’s expected cost and return. The resulting model is thus able to combine
economic and biophysical information with decision-making processes.
Future landscapes are then generated through the evaluation of each field’s
condition in the agricultural landscape. When a field requires a new crop, the
model makes a crop decision, subject to the assumptions and constraints of
the future scenario.