This model attempts to demonstrate the impact of the food diet choices on carbon dioxide emissions (CO2) and deforestation.
The model focuses on the two scenarios: a world with people having a standard omnivore diet and a world with people feeding exclusively on a plant-based diet.
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The model creates an initial land structure composed of forest, farming crop land, and farming livestock (for omnivore diet only).
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Crops 🌾 and livestock 🐑 produce food and emit carbon dioxide (CO2s) onto the atmosphere.
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The CO2s travels in either direction.
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Forests capture the CO2s. 🌳
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The human population is initialised at 7.5M individuals. The population grows according to time and they consume food.
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We track the food security, which is the difference between the quantity of food produced by the land and the quantity of food consumed by the population.
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If the value of food security is negative the deforestation occurs and the forest is replaced by farming crops and livestock.
Setting up initial map 📍
This model can be initialised by clicking one one of the two buttons:
- ‘setup-omnivore’: this will setup forest, livestock farmed land and crop land.
- ‘setup-plant-based’ : this will setup forest and crop land.
go 🏁
starts and stops the simulation.
Hide CO2
If the model slows down, you can click on ‘Hide CO2’, this will hide the CO2s molecules and make the model faster.
population-growth-rate
Sets the growth rate of the word population.
Food-security-migitation
Selects by which source of food will be produced from the deforestation.
The forest can be replaced by crops only or by crops and livestock.
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Both omnivore diet and plant based diet lead to deforestation. However the speed of the deforestation on an omnivore diet faster.
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A plant based diet leads less CO2 released onto the atmosphere
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Running the model initialising the land based on a plant-based diet and omnivore diet
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Changing the population growth rate
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Selecting the forest will be replaced by crops or crops and livestock to sustain food availability
These are some of the ways to extend this model further:
- Add land where there is no forest and no farming is possible, with a more accurate representation of the land distribution
- Make livestock consume crops
- Set up an accurate food quantity produced based on calories for meat and crops
- Set up an accurate green of gas emission for livestock and crops
- Set up an accurate carbon sink by the forest
- Set up and accurate food quantity consumed based on calories
- Add a slider allowing to select the average quantity of animal product consumed per week
If you mention this model or the NetLogo software in a publication, we ask that you include the citations below.
For the model itself:
- Kouidri, A.. NetLogo Climate Change model. Impact of food choices on CO2 emission and deforestation. Data ScienceTech Institute (DSTI), France.
Please cite the NetLogo software as:
- Wilensky, U. (1999). NetLogo. http://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/. Center for Connected Learning and Computer-Based Modeling, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL.