Arguably the greatest challenge to contemporary research is to capture the inter-relatedness and complexity of the real world environment within models so at to better inform decision makers of the accurate and complete consequences of differing options. The paper presents an integrated model of...

Protected areas are a cornerstone of forest conservation in developing countries. Yet we know little about their effects on forest cover change or the socioeconomic status of local communities, and even less about the relationship between these effects. This paper assesses whether 'win-win'...

Land use and land use change are determined as much by economic and institutional drivers as they depend on bio-physical conditions. Future pathways of socio-economic and environmental systems can only be assessed with scenarios which describe possible future paths of development. For this...

We study the optimal and equilibrium distribution of industrial and residential land in a given region. The trade-off between the agglomeration and dispersion forces, in the form of pollution from stationary forces, environmental policy, production externalities, and commuting costs, determines...

The urban transportation sector's environmental, economic, and social footprint is immense and expanding. Many of the world's most vexing and pressing problems - fossil fuel dependency, global warming, poverty, and social exclusion - are inextricably tied to the transportation sector. Much of...

The present paper studies the land use change impacts of fuels and biofuels. We test the theoretical hypothesis, which says that changes in fuel prices cause changes in land use both directly and indirectly and, because of price inter-dependencies, biofuels reinforce the land use change impacts....

Currently, the region named Brazilian Legal Amazon (BLA) represents the agricultural frontier of Brazil, and it concentrates the deforestation processes, so-called arc of deforestation. This region covers the total area of Acre, Amapá, Amazonas, Pará, Rondônia, Roraima, and Tocantins, and...

This study employs an analytic urban economics approach, assuming that Toyohashi City takes a linear shape and there are two districts where the vulnerabilities to the earthquake in the two districts are different. That is, Toyohashi City is divided into two districts, one is safe for the...