Weather, Land and Crops in the Indus Village Model: A Simulation Framework for Crop Dynamics under Environmental Variability and Climate Change in the Indus Civilisation
Authors
Angourakis, Andreas
Bates, Jennifer
Baudouin, Jean-Philippe
Giesche, Alena
Walker, Joanna R
Ustunkaya, M Cemre
Wright, Nathan
Singh, Ravindra Nath
Publication Date
2022-05-01Journal Title
Quaternary
Publisher
MDPI
Volume
5
Issue
2
Language
en
Type
Article
This Version
VoR
Metadata
Show full item recordCitation
Angourakis, A., Bates, J., Baudouin, J., Giesche, A., Walker, J. R., Ustunkaya, M. C., Wright, N., et al. (2022). Weather, Land and Crops in the Indus Village Model: A Simulation Framework for Crop Dynamics under Environmental Variability and Climate Change in the Indus Civilisation. Quaternary, 5 (2) https://doi.org/10.3390/quat5020025
Abstract
The start and end of the urban phase of the Indus civilization (IC; c. 2500 to 1900 BC) are often linked with climate change, specifically regarding trends in the intensity of summer and winter precipitation and its effect on the productivity of local food economies. The Indus Village is a modular agent-based model designed as a heuristic “sandbox” to investigate how IC farmers could cope with diverse and changing environments and how climate change could impact the local and regional food production levels required for maintaining urban centers. The complete model includes dedicated submodels about weather, topography, soil properties, crop dynamics, food storage and exchange, nutrition, demography, and farming decision-making. In this paper, however, we focus on presenting the parts required for generating crop dynamics, including the submodels involved (weather, soil water, land, and crop models) and how they are combined progressively to form two integrated models (land water and land crop models). Furthermore, we describe and discuss the results of six simulation experiments, which highlight the roles of seasonality, topography, and crop diversity in understanding the potential impact of environmental variability, including climate change, in IC food economies. We conclude by discussing a broader consideration of risk and risk mitigation strategies in ancient agriculture and potential implications to the sustainability of the IC urban centres.
Keywords
agent-based modeling, Indus civilization, climate change, bronze age, agriculture
Sponsorship
European Research Council (H2020-648609)
Global Challenges Research Fund’s TIGR2ESS (Transforming India’s Green Revolution by Research and Empowerment for Sustainable food Supplies) Project, Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BB/P027970/1)
Identifiers
External DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/quat5020025
This record's URL: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/336706
Rights
Licence:
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Statistics
Total file downloads (since January 2020). For more information on metrics see the
IRUS guide.
Recommended or similar items
The current recommendation prototype on the Apollo Repository will be turned off on 03 February 2023. Although the pilot has been fruitful for both parties, the service provider IKVA is focusing on horizon scanning products and so the recommender service can no longer be supported. We recognise the importance of recommender services in supporting research discovery and are evaluating offerings from other service providers. If you would like to offer feedback on this decision please contact us on: support@repository.cam.ac.uk