Backcast Land Change Model

Welcome

This is the home page of Backcast Land Use Change Model being developed with support from the NSF Water Cycle Program and the Great Lakes Fishery Trust Lower Muskegon River Watershed Project. You can download the model and sample data below.

 

Structure of the Model   The backcast model is composed of four major routines as illustrated to the right. Neural networks and GIS processed inputs are used to create a probability map of land change (e.g., deurbanization). Quantity of change is determined from historical databases from the US Census Bureau and NASS land in farms statistics.     We have developed several submodels that allow us to interpolate and extrapolate over different time periods which represents different historical data used to build the model.   Two land use maps are required and we also use a map of presettlement to represent "start" conditions. The model has been developed for Michigan's Muskegon River Watershed but can be applied to nearly all locations in the United States or any other area where historical data are available.   The model has also been developed so that we can produce annual historical maps that are then coupled to processed based models, such as a groundwater travel time model (see NSF Water Cycle Project).

Example time series maps from the backchast land change model are shown below for the Muskegon River Watershed in Michigan. Model is executed at 26x26m resolution for the 7,600 km2 watershed.

 

Publications

 

Ray, D. and B. Pijanowski. 2010. A backcast land use change model to generate past land use maps: Application and validation at the Muskegon River Watershed of Michigan, USA. Journal of Land Use Science.10.1080/17474230903150799.

 

Ray, D. K., Duckles, J., & Pijanowski, B. C. 2010. The impact of future land use scenarios on runoff volumes in the Muskegon River Watershed. Environmental Management, 46(3), 351-366.

 

Pijanowski, B., D. Ray, A. Kendall, J. Duckles and D. Hyndman. 2007. Using backcast land use change and groundwater travel-time models to generate land use legacy maps for watershed management. Ecology and Society 12(2):25

 

Ray, D., B. Pijanowski, A. Kendall and D. Hyndman. Quantifying uncertainty in the coupling of backcast land use change and groundwater travel time models: Implications for planning and management (revised and in review). Journal of Environmental Management.

 

 

Download Model and Data for Ray and Pijanowski (2010) Journal of Land Use Science paper

 

The model executables and input files can be downloaded here (over 1 GB once expanded!).

 

Output from the simulations (to make sure you got it right!) can be found here and here. (these are in ArcGIS GRID format).

 

Validation data are posted here (in Excel 2003 format).

Last updated August 26, 2011