Integrated ecosystem model for simulating land use allocation

The impacts of human activities on the natural environment are becoming more and more pronounced. One of the most obvious areas of concern is land use and land cover change. As a result, projects such as Urbanization and Global Environmental Change (UGEC) launched by the International Human Dimension Programme on Global Environmental Change (IHDP) and the Global Land Project (GLP) jointly proposed by IHDP and IGBP were developed to study the interactions between human activities, land systems, and natural environmental change. Based on a biophysical approach, urban energy theory and Multi-Objective Land Allocation (MOLA), the research presented here develops an integrated ecosystem model for the Taipei-Taoyuan area of Taiwan to enhance understanding of the interactions among energy flows, land use preferences and land use change. This paper illustrates how the joint application of an integrated ecosystem model with MOLA can be used in the simulation of land cover change in a region moving from an agricultural landscape to an urbanized system. The integrated ecosystem model also mimics the interactions between human preferences on land use and development allocations in socio-economic systems and potential material and energy flows in ecosystems with high spatial resolution. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.