Track: Ecology, Conservation, and Archaeology
Preventing Biodiversity Conflicts - A Spatial Simulation Model for Projecting Urbanization and Habitat Conflicts at the Hectare Level
John LandisJuan Pablo Monzon , Mike Reilly, Chris Cogan University of California, Santa Cruz
A GIS visualization system was created to examine the impacts projected urbanization would have on natural habitats. The objective of the project is to allow users the ability to consider where and when projected urbanization will adversely impact the natural environment and to simulate how specific development regulations might help avoid such conflicts. By selecting different sets of development policies, a residential density, and the population growth, the decision maker can create different scenarios of urban development and analyze their impacts. The application and the user-friendly interface were created using Avenue, ArcView Spatial Analyst, and the Dialog Designer extension and a set of environmental and urbanization grid data layers for nine California counties. The system also includes a menu for calculating landscape statistics to aid the user in evaluating the quality of various habitat scenarios. This project was developed for the National Biological Service in Sacramento, California.
John Landis
University of California, Berkeley
316 Wurster Hall
Berkeley, CA 94720-1870
USA
Telephone: 510 642-4847
Fax: 510 643-9576
E-mail: landis@ced.berkeley.edu