Distributed land-cover change simulation

Abstract

Computer simulations are used in landscape ecology to simulate the effects of human land-use decisions on the environment. Such decisions are influenced by both ecological and socioeconomic factors which can be represented by spatially explicit multidisciplinary data. The Land-Use Change Analysis System (or LUCAS) was developed to study the effects of land-use on landscape structure in such areas as the Little Tennessee River Basin in western North Carolina and the Olympic Peninsula of Washington state. These effects include land-cover change and species habitat suitability. Using a geographic information system (GIS) to store, display and analyze map layers derived from remotely sensed images, census and ownership maps, topological maps, and output from econometric models, a parallel/distributed version of LUCAS (pLUCAS) was developed for simulations on a network of workstations. Targeting distributed computational environments reflects the resources available to most land-use planners, forestry personnel, and wildlife managers. A performance evaluation of two pLUCAS distributed models on an ATM-based network of 12 SUN Ultra-2 workstations is presented.