The Land-Use Conflict Identification Strategy (LUCIS) is a goal-driven GIS model that produces a spatial representation of probable patterns of future land use divided into the following categories:
• Existing conservation lands
• Existing urban lands
• Existing agricultural lands
as well as:
• Areas preferred for future agriculture land use
• Areas preferred for future conservation land use
• Areas preferred for future urban land use
and additionally:
• Areas of probable future conflict between agricultural and conservation land uses
• Areas of probable future conflict between agricultural and urban land uses
• Areas of probably future conflict between conservation and urban land uses
• Areas of probable future conflict among agricultural, conservation and urban land
LUCIS could be run using any raster-based GIS software, but it has been developed using ESRI's ModelBuilder. The results of a LUCIS model in and of themselves are interesting and very useful, as they suggest what lands are highly appropriate for future development, what lands should be set aside for conservation, and what lands should be set aside for agricultural production of all sorts. But the real power of LUCIS comes from the application of its results to develop alternative land-use futures.
LUCIS was developed over a period of 10 years in a University of Florida graduate design studio for students from the departments of landscape architecture and urban and regional planning. It evolved as we struggled with ways to use traditional land-use suitability analysis as a basis for projecting future land-use alternatives. Its conceptual basis was derived from the work of Eugene P. Odum, one of the twentieth century's foremost ecologists. In this classic article "The Strategy of Ecosystem Development" (1969, 268) Odum proposes four general land-use types in a simplified model, "so that growth-type, steady-state, and intermediate-type ecosystems can be linked with urban and industrial areas for mutual benefit."
In Odum's compartment model, all areas of the landscape were classified into one of four types:
Odum wrote that by dividing land use into these categories, and “by increasing and decreasing the size and capacity of each compartment through computer simulation, it would be possible to determine objectively the limits that must eventually be imposed on each compartment in order to maintain regional and global balances in the exchange of vital energy and materials.” He called it a “systems-analysis procedure,” and noted that it provided “at least one approach to the solution of the basic dilemma posed by the question ‘How do we determine when we are getting too much of a good thing?’” (Odum 1969, 268).
The Table below outlines the LUCIS approach based on the work of Eugene P. Odum, presented in “The Strategy of Ecosystem Development” in 1969.
Odum's Compartment Model Land-Use Classifications | LUCIS's Land-Use Classifications |
---|---|
Productive | Agriculture: Lands that produce food, fuel, and fiber |
Protective | Conservation: Environmentally significant lands |
Compromise | Conservation: Environmentally significant lands |
Urban/Industrial | Urban: Lands that support relatively intense human activity like residential, commercial and industrial uses |
Odum’s Compartment Model was the basis for the LUCIS land classification scheme (Table above). The authors decided to use three, rather than four categories for the LUCIS project for two primary reasons. First, comparison among three categories rather than four tends to maximize the contrast among the categories. Second, the three categories generally relate well to the patterns and purpose of public and private land ownership.