CamFlores: A FLORES-type model for the humid forest margin in Cameroon

A FLORES-type model in the Simile modelling environment is being developed for three villages in the Humid Forest Benchmark area of southern Cameroon. The modelling project seeks to investigate the effects of introduction of new crop varieties and improved farming systems on the long-term maintenance of stable mosaics of forest and agriculture, within the context of the international Alternatives to Slash and Burn programme. Biophysical data have been collated, and socio-econnomic and tenure data have been acquired in spatially-explicit ways. Maps of land-cover at village and benchmark scale are being prepared from detailed and semi-detailed satellite imagery, using a nested legend system that allows linking of maps at different scales. These data enable the initial construction and parameterisation of the model, and will permit the extrapolation of the results of modelling from the villages to the benchmark, and ultimately to the whole of the Congo Basin humid forests. The prototype version of the model involves 10 households and about 500 land patches, and includes the three agricultural systems dominant in the southern more forested portion of the Benchmark (mixed food-fallow systems, forest melon fields, cocoa plantations) with no rental, sale or other transfer of land. Decision-making at the household level is essentially modelled deterministically, and labour productivity is assumed to be constant between households. This model is now complete, and once it has been adjusted and suitably parameterised, it will be applied to real data from the three test villages. This will require the addition of new farming systems, the introduction of modes of permanent or temporary transfer of land, and modification of the decision model to render it more realistic. The work described in this paper is a part of a project funded by the European Union through ICRAF and hosted at the IITA Humid Forest Ecoregional Centre, Cameroon. The assistance of Valentina Robiglio (JPO GIS specialist), especially in preparation of land-cover maps and in collection of socio-economic data, is gratefully acknowledged, as is the work of IITA ASB village facilitators in collection of field data. The cooperation of IITA, IRAD, CIFOR and ICRAF scientists in providing data for the model and periodically reviewing progress with the modelling process was essential to the progress achieved thus far.