A Gis Based Integrated Land Use/cover Change Model to Study Human-land Interactions

Land use and Land cover form an integral part of all modelling initiatives in case of global change studies and hence, there arises a need for time-series data of land use/cover. As such, we need suitable models to explain the changes in the land use patterns and the resulting land cover and also to forecast them. The model proposed here deals with the development and application of a new concept in simulating the land use/cover changes – the presence of an “agent” as the autonomous decision-maker. The biophysical characteristics of the specific lot of land (grid) and its economic potential (based on the macro-economic information) are considered within the existing demographic conditions at a given point in time, in arriving at the choice of the land use. The changes are simulated annually and the entire process is carried out on a grid (1km square) basis. The use of GIS platform and its tools has helped in analysing the microinformation (spatial) within the boundaries of the available macro-level (non-spatial) data. The model was developed and its application was tested to simulate the land use changes, for the period of 1980 to 1990, within the national boundaries of the Royal Kingdom of Thailand. As the model considers the agent behaviour explicitly and at the same time considers the different drivers to landuse, the model can also be used to understand the human responses to the changes in the environment.