Paths to world domination

The deserts of the Sahara and Arabia are some of the largest, and driest, on Earth. But now, using satellite imagery we are mapping dense networks of rivers and lakes within them from when the climate was dramatically different. Over a refreshing pint, hear about our expeditions into the parched Arabian Deserts to investigate these ancient lakes, about the fossils and archaeology we find around them, and how greening of the deserts helped ancient humans and other animals expand out of Africa.

Models that represent the agency of people, households or other individuated decision-maker are becoming increasingly valuable for understanding social and ecological change. We’ll examine here how these ‘agent-based models’ allow us to investigate what the (possibly unexpected) consequences of many interacting individuals might be, and how the rules people use to make decisions generate spatial patterns.