Calibrating a Cellular Automata Model of Land-Use/Land-Cover Change in Southwest China Using the Analytic Hierarchy Process

Abstract

Land cover is "the biophysical state of the earth's surface and immediate subsurface", and land use is "both the manner in which the biophysical attributes of the land are manipulated and the intent underlying that manipulation—the purpose for which the land is used." (Turner et al. 1995) Human land use influences land cover, and land-use change—whether by intensifying an existing use or by converting to an alternate use—is a driver of land cover change. While human land use has modified land cover for tens or even hundreds of thousands of years (Pyne 1994), human land use and its impacts in the present industrial era have grown to be the most significant driver of land cover change globally (Turner et al. 1995). Because the biotic and abiotic character of the land surface is only one dimension of the holistic Earth system, land cover change functions as a change driver on a sobering variety of other biophysical systems, including hydrology (Stohlgren et al. 1998; Bruijnzeel 2004; Gerten et al. 2004), climate (Bounoua et al. 2002; Voldoire et al. 2007), biodiversity (Sala et al. 2000; Jetz, Wilcove, and Dobson 2007), and biogeochemical cycling (Penner 1994; Potter et al. 2001; Solomon et al. 2007). Land-cover change also impacts the state and evolution of human social and economic systems, both directly, and indirectly through its influence on other environmental factors. The past decades have yielded an increased awareness of the scope and potential global impacts of land-use/land-cover change (LUCC) (Turner 2001), and have resulted in a proliferation of studies attempting to characterize and quantify such changes (Ramankutty and Foley 1999; Loveland et al. 1991), to generate insight into the drivers and linkages that produce them (Geist and Lambin 2001; Lambin et al. 2001), and to generate predictions of future LUCC dynamics (Turner et al. 1995; Parker et al. 2003). This thesis reports on methodological research supporting a larger simulation study of potential LUCC within a biodiverse study region in Southwestern China that is subject to ongoing and intensifying land-use/land-cover change. The thesis is organized into four sections. This first section provides background on the methodological tools (cellular automata and the Analytic Hierarchy Process) and establishes the research question underpinning this study. The second section introduces the study site and presents details on the study methods. The third section enumerates the research results. The fourth section discusses the research findings and their implications, and the fifth section concludes the thesis by summarizing the context and contributions of this study.