Cooperative and non-cooperative management for a grazer-plant system

Abstract

Consider a common pasture owned by $N$ herders. We consider first a scenario where the herders are individualistic and only interested in the maximization of their personal yield, neglecting their influence on the vegetation of the pasture. In a second scenario the herders cooperate in order to maximal the total yield of the community and take also the vegetation dynamics into account. Mathematically both scenarios can be expressed as an optimization problem. We study each of this problems and the ecosystem dynamics induced by their solutions, in particular the differences in stability.