Unpacking intention: Using agent based models to predict adoption of best management practices in the Missisquoi River Watershed

Addressing the challenge of excessive nutrient loading in Lake Champlain, and particularly the shallow bays, will require action across the lake’s watershed – a pastoral landscape where people have chosen to live and work. Many actions, or Best Management Practices (BMPs), intended to limit the release of nutrients from property to surface waters will be taken at the household, farm or business scale with individuals responding to both internal and external forces shaping and influencing their decisions. Agent based models (ABMs) have become a popular tool for analyzing these distributed, or bottom up, decision dynamics in complex social-ecological systems (SESs). When coupled with hydrological models and models of the lake itself, we can begin to understand the impact of these distributed decisions downstream. In this presentation, expect to become familiar with the decision models driving BMP adoption by the Farmer Agents in the VT EPSCoR ALL ABM. Preliminary results of the downstream impacts on the Lake will also be shared.