Beyond the Big Picture: Modeling Small-Scale Land Use to Mitigate Health Risks

the poster

here there sill be a the pdf of the poster

contact info

yuvalblo@postbgu.ac.il

importance

Land use represents the fundamental interface between humanity and nature. Every human activity, from the urban centers of New York to the remote tribes of the Amazon, involves occupying and altering the environment to meet specific needs. This environment, in turn, critically impacts human well-being: our health, exposure to disease, and vulnerability to natural disasters are intrinsically linked to our surroundings and how we modify them. Land use change is a primary driver of global environmental crises, it the main cause of 85% of endangered species cases (Hald-Mortensen, 2023), the emergence of 27% of vector-borne zoonotic diseases (VBZD) (Swei, 2020), it is also the leading cause of soil loss (Borrelli, 2017), and accounts for almost a quarter of greenhouse gases (Smith, 2014). Predicting how different patterns of land-use change will unfold and affect these processes is crucial for policymakers and stakeholders to develop strategies that minimize negative consequences for both the environment and human populations.

why it so hard to do so

Understanding the complex impact of land use change remains a significant challenge due to the immense spatiotemporal scale of those processes to conducting field experiments are both time-consuming and expensive. Consequently, scientists frequently employ computer simulation models. These models can project future land-use patterns under various economic, cultural, and regulatory regimes and subsequently test how these projections will affect critical indicators such as biodiversity, VBZD incidence, and soil degradation. but those model often

Celoluer aoutomata (CA)

Celoluer aoutomata are one of the main tool in lad use change modling is CA and that becouse CA is capble to capture complex dynmic with

>