DINAMICA - a stochastic cellular automata model designed to simulate the landscape dynamics in an Amazonian colonization frontier

DINAMICA, a spatially explicit simulation model of landscape dynamics has been developed. DINAMICA is a cellular automata model that presents multi-scale vicinity-based transitional functions, incorporation of spatial feedback approach to a stochastic multi-step simulation engine, arid the application of logistic regression to calculate the spatial dynamic transition probabilities. This model was initially conceived for the simulation of Amazonian landscape dynamics, particularly the landscapes evolved in areas occupied by small farms. For testing its performance, the model was used to simulate spatial patterns of land-use and land-cover changes produced by the Amazonian colonists in clearing the forest, cultivating the land, and eventually abandoning it for vegetation succession. The study area is located in an Amazonian colonization frontier in the north of Mato Grosso state, Brazil. The model was run for two sub-areas of colonization projects, using an 8-year time span, from 1986 to 1994. The simulated maps were compared with land-use and land-cover maps, obtained from digital classification of remote sensing images, using the multiple resolution fitting procedure and a set of landscape structure measures, including fractal dimension, contagion index, and the number of patches for each type of land-use and land-cover class. The results from the validation methods for the two areas showed a good performance of the model indicating that it can be used for replicating the spatial patterns created by landscape dynamics in Amazonian colonization regions occupied by small farms. Possible applications of DINAMICA include the evaluation of landscape fragmentation produced by different architectures of colonization projects and the prediction of a region's spatial pattern evolution according to various dynamic phases. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.