Modelling environmental dynamics is critical to understanding and predicting the evolution of the environment in response to the large number of influences including urbanisation, climate change and deforestation. Simulation and modelling provide support for decision making in environmental management. The first chapter introduces terminology and provides an overview of methodological modelling approaches which may be applied to environmental and complex dynamics. Based on this introduction this book illustrates various models applied to a large variety of themes: deforestation in tropical regions, fire risk, natural reforestation in European mountains, agriculture, biodiversity, urbanism, climate change and land management for decision support, etc. These case studies, provided by a large international spectrum of researchers and presented in a uniform structure, focus particularly on methods and model validation so that this book is not only aimed at researchers and graduates but also at professionals.

Contenu
Concepts, Tools and Applications.- Advances in geomatic simulations for environmental dynamics.- Case Studies.- Land use / Land cover change dynamics in the Mexican highlands: current situation and long term scenarios.- Tropical deforestation modelling: comparative analysis of different predictive approaches. The case study of Peten, Guatemala.- Evaluation of prospective modelling methods: fuzzy logics and cellular automaton applied to deforestation in Venezuela.- Prospective modelling of environmental dynamics: A methodological comparison applied to mountain land cover changes.- GIS-supported modelling and diagnosis of fire risk at the wildland urban interface. A methodological approach for operational management.- Participatory modelling of social and ecological dynamics in mountain landscapes subjected to spontaneous ash reforestation.- Land use scenarios: a communication tool with local communities.- Retrospective geomatic landscape modelling. A probabilistic approach.- Simulating greenhouse growth in urban zoning on the coast of Granada (Spain).- Greenhouses, land use change, and predictive models: MaxEnt and Geomod working together.- Modelling intra-urban dynamics in the Savassi neighbourhood, Belo Horizonte city, Brazil.- Creation and evaluation of development scenarios for metropolitan patterns.- Towards a set of IPCC SRES urban land use scenarios: modelling urban land use in the Madrid region.