Nick is interested in combining elements of FASSET, a farm assessment tool into ALMaSS to increase the farming realism. More on FASSET here: http://www.fasset.dk

A new ALMaSS paper is available as online first from GCB Bioenergy. I've uploaded a pdf into the ALMaSS Research papers section of Docs: Biodiversity and the mitigation of climate change through bioenergy: impacts of increased maize cultivation on farmland wildlife JANA GEVERS, TOKE THOMAS HØYE, CHRIS JOHN TOPPING, MICHAEL GLEMNITZ and BORIS SCHRODER Abstract The public promotion of renewable energies is expected to increase the number of biogas plants and stimulate energy crops cultivation (e.g. maize) in Germany. In order to assess the indirect effects of the resulting land-use changes on biodiversity, we developed six land-use scenarios and simulated the responses of six farmland wildlife species with the spatially explicit agent-based model system ALMaSS. The scenarios differed in composition and spatial configuration of arable crops. We implemented scenarios where maize for energy production replaced 15% and 30% of the area covered by other cash crops. Biogas maize ...(see more)

Welcome to Hazel who is currently working at CSIRO in Australia. Hazel has been using ALMaSS to look at the impact of changes in set-aside management on skylarks in the UK as an example of an ABM for policy use.