Berry, M. W., R. O. Flamm, B. C. Hazen, and R. L. MacIntyre. 1996.
Lucas: A System for Modeling
Land-Use Change.
IEEE Computational Science & Engineering 3:1,
pp. 24-35.
Ecological dynamics in human-influenced landscapes
are strongly affected by socioeconomic factors that influence
land-use decision making. Incorporating these factors into
a spatially-explicit landscape-change model requires integrating
multidisciplinary information. In order to study the effects of
land use on landscape structure in selected watersheds,
the Land-Use
Change Analysis
System or
LUCAS for UNIX-based workstations
is developed. The map layers used by LUCAS
can be derived from remotely-sensed images, census
and ownership maps, topographical maps, and outputs from
econometric models. These map layers are stored, displayed, and analyzed
using the public-domain Geographic Information System (GIS)
known as GRASS.
Simulations using LUCAS
generate sequential maps of land cover showing the amount and
distribution of land-cover change. LUCAS may be used to assess
many landscape issues, including the importance of landscape elements in
meeting biodiversity, conservation, or forest productivity goals or for
enhancing long-term landscape integrity.
The object-oriented design
of LUCAS (written in C++) will greatly facilitate its use in the
horizontal integration of forest responses to environmental stresses and
disturbances for the second module of the Integrated Modeling Project (IMP).
LUCAS is being
adapted to incorporate the frequency distributions of forest responses
to multiple environmental stresses into land-use change simulations.