Due to the fact that the South Africa’s savanna landscapes are under changing conditions, the previously sustainable firewood collection system in rural areas has become a social-ecological factor in questions about landscape management. While the resilience of savannas in national parks such as Kruger National Park (KNP) in South Africa has been widely acknowledged in ecosystem management, the resilience of woody vegetation outside protected areas has been underappreciated. Collecting wood is the dominant source of energy for rural households, and there is an urgent need for land management to find sustainable solutions for this complex social-ecological system. However, the firewood collection scenario is only one example, and stands for all “human-ecosystem service” interactions under the topic of over-utilization, e.g., fishery, grazing, harvesting. Agent-based modeling combined with goal-oriented action planning (GOAP) can provide fresh insights into the relationship between individual needs of humans and changes in land use. At the same time, this modeling approach includes adaptive behavior under changing conditions. A firewood collection scenario was selected for a proof-of-concept comprising households, collectors, ecosystem services and firewood sites. Our results have shown that, even when it is predictable what a single human agent will do, massive up-scaling is needed in order to understand the whole complexity of social-ecological systems. Under changing conditions, such as climate and an increasing population, fair distribution of natural goods become an important issue.

Understanding the dynamics of tree species and their demography is necessary for predicting future developments in savanna ecosystems. In this contribution, elephant-tree and firewood collector-tree interactions are compared using a multiagent model. To investigate these dynamics, we compared three different tree species in two plots. The first plot is located in the protected space of Kruger National Park (KNP), South Africa, and the second plot in the rural areas of the Bushbuckridge Municipality, South Africa. The agent-based modeling approach enabled the modeling of individual trees with characteristics such as species, age class, size, damage class, and life history. A similar level of detail was applied to agents that represent elephants and firewood collectors. Particular attention was paid to modeling purposeful behavior of humans in contrast to more instinct-driven actions of elephants. The authors were able to predict future developments by simulating the time period between 2010 and 2050 with more than 500,000 individual trees. Modeling individual trees for a time span of 40 years might yield more detailed information than a simple woody mass aggregation. The results indicate a significant trend toward more and thinner trees together with a notable reduction in mature trees, while the total aboveground biomass appears to stay more or less constant. Furthermore, the KNP scenarios show an increase in young Combretum apiculatum, which may correspond to bush encroachment.