Strategies for landscape ecology: An application using cellular automata models

Abstract

The countervailing cellular automata (CVCA) is a loose coupled program designed to work in conjunction with SLEUTH (an urban cellular automata simulation model). CVCA operationalises a set of landscape ecological strategies for urban planning. CVCA first assesses a landscape against a set of landscape metrics. It then evaluates the proposed urban cells from SLEUTH against the metrics and allocates future land uses according to a suite of planning strategies (offensive, defensive, protective, opportunistic). This paper describes the development of CVCA, the theory behind the landscape strategies, and the actions taken to bring CVCA into a computable environment. An application of CVCA in two metropolitan areas in Portugal (Porto and Lisbon) is made and discussed. The results of implementing it are then discussed and evaluated. The paper concludes that the implementation of the cellular automata model CVCA, loose coupled with SLEUTH (a cellular automaton urban model), provides a robust and useful application of landscape ecological strategies in metropolitan planning. The applied strategies vary locally as a function of the specifics concerning particular patterns and processes to be promoted. Besides the quantitative analysis they provide, these patterns and processes can also be assessed and compared in terms of the resulting images of urban growth, the location and the shape of corridors, buffers, and the relative importance of the different landscape ecological planning strategies. The paper ends with a comprehensive discussion of the four main subject areas, in the context of cellular automaton and dynamic models: the importance of integrated planning strategies for the territory; the lack of planning tools; the importance of cellular automaton approaches and applications; and the results of applying SLEUTH and CVCA to two metropolitan areas.