To make sense of LUCIS and its potential applications, the following terms must be defined from the outset. They are presented here to eliminate ambiguity that might otherwise be associated with these commonly used words and phrases.

Agriculture Land-use

The agricultural land-use category includes the full range of agricultural uses and can be customized depending upon one's region and the character of agriculture to be found there. For our purposes it includes croplands; low-intensity livestock that occurs mostly on pasture and shrub and brushland; intensively managed livestock, including feedlots, swine operations, and dairies; commercial timberlands or silvicultural operations; and specialty agriculture that includes fruits orchards, nurseries, and aquaculture.

Conservation Land-use

The conservation land-use category includes lands with some degree of permanent protection with at least a partial conservation mission. These may be publicly owned like national and state parks or forests, Bureau of Land Management lands, or national and state wildlife refuges and management areas. They may also be privately owned like agricultural lands protected through conservation easements. A specific example is land used for timber production, permanently protected through a conservation easement held by a public entity or a private land trust.

Urban Land-use

The urban land-use category includes all land uses commonly found within the umbrella of land use. These include residential, office and commercial, retail, wholesale and warehouses, and industrial and institutional uses. Urban parks and recreational areas like golf courses are also included in this category.

Suiability

Suitability is a measure of the relative degree to which a land unit is fit for a specified purpose. The determination of suitability is based strictly on its current condition and the context in which it is found. It neither anticipates nor requires any change for the assignment of a suitability value. As further explained in the book, we choose to measure a suitability on a scale of 1 to 9, with 1 representing low to the suitability and 9 representing high suitability.

Preference

Preference is a measure of the degree to which a land-use category (agriculture, conservation, or urban) is preferred for any given land unit. As further explained in the book, preference is determined by combining land-use suitability with a weight (or percentage of influence) that serves to measure the importance of a community assigns to each suitability factor. For example, does the community believe residential land-use suitability is more important than retail land-use suitability when determining overall urban land-use preference?

Land-use Conflict

Land-use conflict is identified by comparing the preference derived for each land-use category with the others for each land unit. Where preferences are equal, conflict is predicted. If, on the other hand, one land-use category, urban for example, has a higher preference score for a given land unit than the other categories, then no conflict is predicted. The expectation for this land unit would be that it remains in the urban category if that is its present use, or that it will likely be converted into an urban use. Using this approach, the potential for land-use conflict can be predicted for an entire study area.