Human actors dynamically interact with natural systems and, based on external and internal motivators, adapt their actions to changing conditions. As these bi-directional interactions and their feedback shape the sustainable outcomes across natural and human systems, analyzing how key human actors may respond to and adopt their behavior under different environmental, social, and economic contexts can help gain insights for a deeper understanding and realistic assessment of the plausible future outcomes and multi-sectoral evolution from local to regional scales. The representation of human actors and their decision processes in the Earth and environment system modeling is still in its early days, and critical questions such as the evolution of managed ecosystems, the co-evolution of urban lands with surrounding natural ecosystems, and the identification of system thresholds and tipping points, need to be addressed. 

In this presentation, we highlight two novel research frameworks that leverage adaptions by human actors under changing climatic and economic contexts to assess the co-evolution of coupled systems, changes in exposure and risks, and equitable outcomes across stakeholder groups. In the first framework, as a part of the Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Biological and Environmental Research’s (BER) COMPASS-GLM project, we develop an Agent-Based Model (ABM) of agricultural practices and their adaptation in the Great Lakes Region. The ABM will be coupled with a downscaled regional earth system model and a hydrologic model to assess the nutrient run-offs to Lake Erie and relevant macroeconomic outcomes such as farm economics and land-use change under future climate and market scenarios. In the second, we leverage insights from an ABM (CHANCE-C, developed in DOE BER’s ICoM project) and empirical analysis to explore and characterize community-level risk and vulnerability from future flood events.