Browsing by Author "Fragoso, R."
Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
Results Per Page
Sort Options
- An integrated decision support system for the Mediterranean forestsPublication . Costa Freitas, M. B.; Xavier, António; Fragoso, R.Mediterranean forests contain a relevant biological diversity and are relevant for local economy. However, they are subject to various risks, particularly the risk of forest fires. This turns the critical decisions of forest managers, affecting both the long-term future of the forest and daily activities, to be difficult. To simulate decisions, and help managers and policy makers, a decision support system, which integrates the biological, environmental and economic management perspectives of agricultural and forest areas, was developed and considers the activities existing in the territory. The decision support system considers the characteristics of the biophysical units that comprise the territorial study area, production technologies and conservation of agro-forestry goods and preferences of managers or stakeholders. The proposed approach was applied in a pilot Forest Intervention Zone (FIZ) located within the Algarve region inner land. The results show that the decision support system proposed is an important tool for managing the territory and for implementing the manager's decisions. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
- Generate disaggregated soil allocation data using a Minimum Cross Entropy ModelPublication . Fragoso, R.; Freitas, Maria de Belém; Lucas, M. R. V.Montado ecosystem in the Alentejo Region, south of Portugal, has enormous agro-ecological and economics heterogeneities. A definition of homogeneous sub-units among this heterogeneous ecosystem was made, but for them is disposal only partial statistical information about soil allocation agro-forestry activities. The paper proposal is to recover the unknown soil allocation at each homogeneous sub-unit, disaggregating a complete data set for the Montado ecosystem area using incomplete information at sub-units level. The methodological framework is based on a Generalized Maximum Entropy approach, which is developed in thee steps concerning the specification of a r order Markov process, the estimates of aggregate transition probabilities and the disaggregation data to recover the unknown soil allocation at each homogeneous sub-units. The results quality is evaluated using the predicted absolute deviation (PAD) and the "Disagegation Information Gain" (DIG) and shows very acceptable estimation errors.
- The economic effects of common agricultural policy on Mediterranean montado/dehesa ecosystemPublication . Fragoso, R.; Marques, C.; Lucas, M. R.; Freitas, Maria de Belém; Jorge, R.The decoupling of CAP payments leads production decisions and resources allocation to be more dependent on market prices and competitive advantages. The objective of this paper is to assess the effects of CAP trends on the montado/dehesa traditional ecosystem of Mediterranean regions in terms of farm income, land, labour and capital. A positive mathematical supply model disaggregated by the montado agro-forestry production systems of the Alentejo region in southern Portugal is developed. The results show that decoupling payments of CAP have negative economic effects on agricultural activities and resource use. Agricultural income increases with single farm payments but the foreseen increases in prices do not compensate the loss of the Agenda 2000 area payments in terms of competitiveness. These results reinforce the need to promote alternative agricultural and non-agricultural activities and policies in Mediterranean rural European areas and regions. (C) 2011 Society for Policy Modeling. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.