LANDIS

General System description

System Name: LANDIS

Brief overview

LANDIS is a spatially explicit landscape simulation model. It models natural processes, such as fire, wind, and insect disturbance; succession, and seed dispersal, as well as forest management.

Scope of the system

The purpose of LANDIS is to predict forest landscape change over long time periods. LANDIS was developed because previous forest simulation models were not suited for larger areas. Spatially explicit computer simulation of entire landscapes requires simulation at appropriate spatial resolution and level of mechanisms and processes that are modelled.

LANDIS is a spatially explicit landscape simulation model. It models natural processes, such as fire, wind, and insect disturbance; succession, and seed dispersal, as well as forest management. LANDIS is raster-based and tracks only presence or absence of tree species in a given age class. Disturbance events are simulated stochastically based on mean return intervals and disturbance size. [1]

System origin

LANDIS development began in the early 1990s under the direction of Dr. David Mladenoff, with partial funding from the Northern Research Station, Rhinelander, Wisconsin. Dr. Hong He joined the team in the late 1990s followed by Dr. Robert Scheller several years later. There are two currently supported versions of LANDIS which were developed with primary funding from the Northern Research Station of the USDA Forest Service.

LANDIS 4.0 is a fully modular software product with improved fire simulation and new capabilities for simulating fuel accumulation and decomposition and disturbance by biological agents such as insects and disease. Dr. He led the development of this version at the University of Missouri in collaboration with the Northern Research Station in Rhinelander, Wisconsin.

LANDIS-II is a completely re-engineered version developed at the Forest Landscape Ecology Laboratory, University of Wisconsin-Madison, in collaboration with the Northern Research Station in Rhinelander, Wisconsin. LANDIS-II was designed to advance forest landscape simulation modeling in many respects, including:

• allows for the incorporation of ecosystem processes and states (e.g., live biomass accumulation) at broad spatial scales
• has flexible time steps for every process,
• uses an advanced architecture that will significantly increase collaborative potential.

Support for specific issues

• Landscape planning

Support for specific thematic areas of a problem type

• Silvicultural

Capability to support decision making phases

• Intelligence: LANDIS supportS understanding natural changes in ecosystem states
• Design: LANDIS allows creating various management simulations to understand how these affect ecosystems over time

Related systems

• LDAVI (LANDIS ArcView Interface) is an extension for ArcView 3.1 on Windows NT, that allows for convenient display of LANDIS output.

Data and data models

Typical spatial extent of application

• Regional
• Multi-owner forest
• Single-owner forest

Forest data input

• Stand

Type of information input from user (via GUI)

• Biophysical

Models

Forest models

• Silvicultural
• Climate impacts
• Insects/Disease
• Fire

Social models

Social and economic impacts must be inferred from spatially explicit estimates of biophysical change.

Decision Support

Definition of management interventions

[Define what is available for the manager to intervene in the forest: time of harvest, plantations, thinnings, reconversions...Existence of prescription writer, simple enumeration of all possibilities, scenario simulation , etc.]

Typical temporal scale of application

• LANDIS is typically run for simulations from 10-1000 years.
• LANDIS-II has flexible time steps for every ecological process.

Decision-making processes and models

• Simulation

System

System requirements

Operating systems:

Development status: Prototype being applied

Architecture and major DSS components

[Describe the basic architecture of the system in software and hardware. Desktop client-server, web based, as well as the integration with available systems. Basic data flow, focusing on retrieval of required input and propagation and implementations of decisions. Mention its modular and scalability capabilities.]

Usage

[Describe the level of use: Research level use, Industry use, Government use.]

Computational limitations

[Describe the system limitations: e.g. number of management units, number of vehicles, time horizon.]

User interface

User interface quality:

Complexity of system / user interface: Using this program requires a substantial investment in learning the details of the software.

Documentation and support

Support: A bulletin board for LANDIS users is available at: http://ash.forest.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/users/YaBB.pl

Installation

Prerequisite knowledge needed: This software is not designed for mass consumption. Successful application is probably best accomplished through a team that includes individuals with working knowledge of UNIX systems, C and C++ language, GIS packages, forest vegetation dynamics, associated resource interactions, and forest planning. [Mowrer]

Cost: Not priced

Demo:

References

External resources

Website: http://www.landis-ii.org/

Publications: http://www.landis-ii.org/documentation/PublicationsPage