Simulating land use change by integrating landscape metrics into ANN-CA in a new way

Landscape metrics are measurements of landuse patterns and land-use change, but even so, have rarely been integrated into land-use change simulation models. This paper proposes a new artificial neural network-cellular automaton by integrating landscape metrics into the model. In this model, each cell acquires unique landscape metric values. The landscape metric values of each cell are actually the landscape metric values of land use type in its neighborhood, which takes the cell as center. The calculation of landscape metrics ensures that those of each cell can represent cellular spatial environmental characteristics. The model is used to simulate land use change in the Changping district of Beijing, China. Comparisons of the simulated land use map with the actual map show that the proposed model is effective for land use change simulation. The validation is further carried out by comparing the simulated land use map with that simulated by an artificial neural network-cellular automaton model, which has not been integrated with landscape metrics. Results indicate that the proposed model is more appropriate for simulating both quantity and spatial distribution of land use change in the study area.