Dawn Parker's Home Page

Dawn Cassandra Parker
Assistant Professor, George Mason University
    Department of Computational Social Science
    Center for Social Complexity
    Affiliate, Department of Geography, Department of Earth Systems and Geoinformation Science,
Department of Environmental Science and Policy

Member, Scientific Steering Committee, Global Land Project

Office: 374 Research 1
Phone: 703-993-4640
E-mail: dparker3 at gmu dot edu
Office hours: Tuesday and Thursday 3-4, or by apt.
Website: http://mason.gmu.edu/~dparker3

My CV (generally most up-to-date-item)

Moderately complete publication list (includes most book chapters, conference papers, etc.)

Education:

Post-doctoral Fellow in Modeling 2000-2002, Center for the Study of Institutions, Population, and Environmental Change, Indiana University
Ph.D, University of California, Davis, 2000, Agricultural and Resource Economics
B.A., Lewis and Clark College, 1992, Economics

Teaching:

Land-Use Modeling Techniques and Applications (GEOG531/EVPP531/CSS643)
Course Web Site, Fall 2007

Introduction to Environmental and Resource Economics (GEOG524/EVPP524)
Course Web Site Fall 2004,
Course Web Site Fall 2006,

Economics of Human/Environment Interactions (GEOG525/EVPP525)
Course Web Site, Spring 2005

Spatial Agent-based Models of Human/Environment Interactions (GEOG 631/EVPP 631/CSS 645)
Course Web Site, Spring 2007

Ecological Economics (GEOG 631/EVPP 490/Geog399)
Course Web Site, Fall 2007

ESRI user's conference "Spatial Analysis and Modeling" pre-conference talk (2005)

Research Interests:

Development of integrated socio-economic and biophysical models of land-use change, agent-based modeling, complexity theory, geographic information systems, environmental and resource economics

Research Activities:

Timber harvest and carbon sequestration: With colleagues from West Virginia University, an integrated model of timber harvest and carbon sequestration is being developed, under NSF grant #0414060, "Land Use and Carbon in Eastern Deciduous Forests: Interactions Between Human Activities and Ecosystem Processes (Hessl, Peterjohn, Thomas and Parker)
Exploring the effects of off-site land uses on water quality in the Potomac Gorge National Park. This research is a partnership between ESP faculty and graduate students (Dawn Parker, Susan Crate, R. Chris Jones, and Robin Brake), the National Park Service Center for Urban Ecology, and the Potomac Gorge National Park. The research is funded through the NPS Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit.

Agent-Based Dynamics of Social Complexity: Modeling Adaptive Behavior and Long-Term Change in Inner Asia. This project is a collaboration between the Center for Social Complexity at GMU (Claudio Cioffi-Revilla, Dawn Parker, Sean Luke, and others) and the Smisonian Institute (J. Daniel Rogers, William Fitzhugh and others). The work is funded by NSF Human and Social Dynamics grant BCS-0527471.

My SLUDGE model (Simulated Land Use Dependent on Edge Effect Externalities). This is a simple combined cellular automaton and agent-based model designed to study the joint influence of distance-dependent spatial externalities and transportation costs on patterns of land use. The work is discussed in the following papers:

SFI working paper
"Measuring Pattern Outcomes in an Agent-Based Model of Edge-Effect Externalities Using Spatial Metrics"; Parker and Meretsky, 2004, Agriculture, Ecosystems, and Environment 101:233-250.
``Agent-Based Modeling to Explore Linkages Between Preferences for Open Space , Fragmentation at the Urban-Rural Fringe, and Economic Welfare" D. Parker. Proceedings of the workshop ``The role of open space and green amenities in the residential move from cities,'' INRE, Dijon, France, Dec. 13-16, 2005.
A RePast version of the model was also used by students at the MODLUC European advanced study course.
RePast code and documentation for SLUDGE (Robert Najlis, programmer; Dawn Parker, designer).
SluGIS is a closely-related model that runs on a vector landscape, developed by Robert Najlis. The fully open-source version (Repast development team, programmed by Robert Najlis) uses the Repast GIS tools. The Agent Analyst version (Argonne National Laboratories, University of Michigan, and ESRI, programmed by Robert Najlis, Nick Collier, and others) works with Repast and ArcGIS.
V-SLUDGE is a pre-Beta version of SLUDGE that operates on a vector landscape, using JUMP. Programming by Robert Najlis.

I am collaborating with Tatiana Filatova, PhD candidate at the University of Twente (supervisor Anne van der Veen) on development of the ALMA (Agent-based Land MArket) model, which expands the SLUDGE model to include bilateral trading between heterogeneous buyer and seller agents. We have several papers that discuss the model and results, available on request. Tatiana's dissertation will apply the model to examine the impacts of open-space amenities and flood risk perceptions on land values in coastal regions.

Collaborations with the FEARLUS group at the Macaulay Institute, Scotland. Collaborations with Nick Gotts, Gary Polhill, and others have focused on power-law distributions of rural land holdings in Scotland (Gotts and Parker 2004 a,b), and on developing a land market component for FEARLUS (ELMM, the "Endogenous Land Market Model"; Polhill, Parker, and Gotts 2005, 2008).

Development of protocols for representation and communication of agent-based models of land use. The MR POTATOHEAD ("(Model Representing Potential Objects That Appear in The Ontology of Human-Environmental Actions & Decisions") strives to represent and describe the key building blocks of an agent-based model of land use. The "Conceptual Design Pattern" is described in Parker, Brown, Polhill, Manson, and Deadman (2008), and five models are described using it. Parker et al. (forthcoming, JLUS) uses the MR POTATOHEAD CDP to compare four agent-based models of land-use change in frontier regions. MR POTATOHEAD has been implemented in the Protege/OWL by S. M. Mussavi Rizi, Parker, and Polhill.

The effects of household structure, subsistence requirements, and HIV on household cropping decisions in Uganda. Dissertation research of Maction Komwa, GMU ESP. The research has been supported through collaborations with IFPRI (Stan Wood and Todd Benson) and with Thomas Berger and Pepijn Schreinemachers at the University of Hohenheim. In 2007-2008 Maction's research will be supported by a LEAP ("Leadership Enhancement in Agriculture) fellowship from the Bourlaug foundation. Here is a brief overview of the project; more papers to follow soon!

Multi-Agent System Models of Land-Use Change (MASLUC) development activities:

Co-organizer of the Special Workshop on Agent-Based Models of Land Use, co-sponsored by CIPEC, LUCC Focus 1, and CSISS. Final products include:

"Multi-Agent System Models for the Simulation of Land-Use and Land-Cover Change: A Review"; Parker, Dawn C., Steven M. Manson, Marco A. Janssen, Matthew J. Hoffmann, and Peter Deadman, 2003, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 93(2).

LUCC Report #6: "Agent-Based Models of Land-Use and Land-Cover Change"; Parker, Berger, Mason eds. (Shorter workshop proceedings)
"Meeting the Challenge of Complexity: Proceedings of the Special Workshop on Agent-Based Models of Land-Use/Land-Cover Change"; Parker, Berger, Mason, eds. CIPEC/CSISS. A .pdf version is also available.
"MASpace" an electronic mailing list devoted to Multi-Agent System Models of Spatial Human-Environment Interactions. The list is meant to facilitate communication between researchers in multiple disciplines for discussion of spatial agent-based models of human-environment interactions. Please note the list has moved to Indiana University, and is now co-sponsored by the GMU Center for Social Complexity, CIPEC, and the Global Land Project nodal office on integration and modelling.
MAS/LUCC Resource site, hosted by CSISS. Includes events, research, literature, software resources, and a listing of MAS/LUCC research projects. Please add information about your ongoing work.

I was a participant in the ESRI sponsored workshop on modeling and GIS, and authored the chapter, "Integration of Geographic Information Systems and Agent-Based Models of Land Use: Challenges and Prospects," for the volume, GIS, Spatial Analysis and Modeling, David J. Maguire, Michael F. Goodchild and Michael Batty, eds.
See CV for additional workshops, conference sessions, etc. etc.

Dissertation: "Edge-Effect Externalities: Theoretical and Empirical Implications of Spatial Heterogeneity"

My dissertation examines the impacts of spatial externalities that decline as the distance from a generating land use increases. Pesticide drift is a good intuitive example. Several theoretical chapters examine both the individual behavioral incentives that these externalities create and the theoretical impact of these externalities on patterns of economic activity. An empirical chapter tests for landscape pattern based evidence of avoidance of potential negative externalities from conventional farmers by certified organic farmers in California's Central Valley. A very special thanks to the group of California Certified Organic Farmers who provided data for my research.