![2. Land-use change at cadastral parcel level in Albania 35
The analysis concerns in particular the ‘medium-level-modification-in-
agriculture’ land-use change and focuses on areas that are either not
cultivated or fallow, regrouped under uncultivated, as (temporary)
abandonment of cultivated and especially terraced areas is a problem. For
the two periods, a set of decision rules was extracted that describe the
pathways of change. The complete set of rules for 1996-2003 is almost twice
the number of the previous period (719 versus 366 rules), though there are
less changes in that period. Two types of rules are extracted, i.e.
transformation and inertial rules, with the description of their conditions
(e.g. IF LU1 and [conditions 1, 2, ...] THEN LU2). Transformation rules
describe a land-use change (LU1 ≠ LU2), whereas inertial rules describe a
land use not subject to change (LU1 = LU2). The extracted rules show that in
1996-2003, the vicinity of the examined cell does not influence the land-use
change dynamics in particular. In 1991-1996, one finds the opposite, i.e. the
vicinity of the cell is very important for change dynamics. One should also
note that in 1991-1996, the extracted rules are essentially inertial rules and
transformation rules are few and related to only a few cells, whereas in
1996-2003, there are more transformation rules than inertial rules.
Furthermore, the transformation rules for 1991-1996 contain one principal
condition that leads to a certain land-use change. In 1996-2003, a principal
condition accompanied by more than one set of sub-conditions leads to the
same land-use change. So, the preferred pathways of change are much more
complex in the second period.
Tables 2-2 to 2-5 show those rules related to permanent cropping,
temporary cropping and uncultivated areas. A change that becomes more
evident is that remote areas with either permanent or temporary cropping,
often on steeper terrain, and with a lack of infrastructure tend to become
uncultivated. So, in these areas the agricultural intensity has decreased
dramatically.
Application of the set of decision rules for 1996-2003 to the original data
of 1996 resulted in a predicted land use for 2003 with a correlation
coefficient of 0.75 with the observed 2003 data. The difference between the
average square root of classification (0.15) and average absolute error (0.04)
is low, which means the absence of classification outliers. In addition, the
accuracy of prediction for each land-use class is above 0.70 with the
exceptions of services and industrial areas because the first class is barely
present in 1996 and the second absent at that date. Low values for these two
classes, however, do not imply that the extracted decision rules involving
these classes are erroneous, but they do indicate that these rules are not
easily tested and evaluated.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/502140-250529141558-f13022f8/85/Modelling-Landuse-Change-Progress-And-Applications-Koomen-E-Ed-54-320.jpg)
Modelling Landuse Change Progress And Applications Koomen E Ed
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- 7. The GeoJournal Library Volume 90 Managing Editor: Max Barlow, Toronto, Canada Founding Series Editor: Wolf Tietze, Helmstedt, Germany Editorial Board: Paul Claval, France Yehuda Gradus, Israel Sam Ock Park, South Korea Herman van der Wusten, The Netherlands The titles published in this series are listed at the end of this volume.
- 8. Edited by Department of Spatial Economics/SPINlab, Modelling Land-Use Change Progress and applications ERIC KOOMEN University of Leeds, JOHN STILLWELL School of Geography, United Kingdom ALDRIK BAKEMA Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, Bilthoven, The Netherlands and Department of Spatial Economics/SPINlab, HENK J. SCHOLTEN Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands
- 9. A C.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress ISBN 978-1-4020-5648-2 (e-book) Published by Springer, P.O. Box 17, 3300 AA Dordrecht, The Netherlands. www.springer.com Printed on acid-free paper All Rights Reserved No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work. © 2007 Springer ISBN 978-1-4020-5647-5 (HB)
- 10. Contents Contributing authors ix Preface xv Acknowledgements xvii 1 25 Limmat Valley, Switzerland 45 61 with the acceleration of urbanisation in China 83 v 1. Modelling land-use change 2. Land-use change at cadastral parcel level in Albania PART I: Analysis of land-use trends and their driving forces 3. Driving forces of landscape change in the urbanizing 4. Landscape changes in the Israeli Carmel area 5. New land-use development processes associated E. KOOMEN AND J. STILLWELL L.J.M. JANSEN, G. CARRAI AND M. PETRI A.M. HERSPERGER AND M. BÜRGI M. SONIS, M. SHOSHANY AND N. GOLDSHLAGER Z.-G. WU, S.-H. ZHOU AND C.-C. FENG PART II: Explanatory models of land-use change 97 6. Driving forces of land-use change in a cultural landscape of Spain J. PEÑA, A. BONET, J. BELLOT, J.R. SÁNCHEZ, D. EISENHUTH, S. HALLETT AND A. ALEDO
- 11. vi Contents ps to downscale aggregated land-use data 117 133 PART III: Optimisation modelling 147 ecosystems 167 GeneticLand: modelling land-use change using evolutionary algorithms 181 PART IV: Incorporation of new modelling approaches employment deconcentration 199 219 7. Empirically derived probability ma 8. A spatial interaction model for agricultural uses 9. Spatial optimisation in land-use allocation problems 10. Sustainable land-use and water management in mountain 11. 12. Microsimulation of metropolitan 13. Simulation of polycentric urban growth dynamics through agents N. DENDONCKER, P. BOGAERT, AND M. ROUNSEVELL J. GONÇALVES AND T. DENTINHO W. LOONEN, P. HEUBERGER, M. KUIJPERS-LINDE S.K. MANDAL J. SEIXAS, J.P. NUNES, P. LOURENÇO AND J. CORTE-REAL D. FELSENSTEIN, E. ASHBEL AND A. BEN-NUN W. LOIBL, T. TÖTZER, M. KÖSTL AND K. STEINNOCHER PART V: Operational land-use simulation models 281 PUMA: multi-agent modelling of urban systems 237 regional dynamics using GIS 259 14. 15. Integrating cellular automata and 16. A land-use modelling system for environmental impact assessment D. ETTEMA, K. DE JONG, H. TIMMERMANS AND A. BAKEMA K. PIYATHAMRONGCHAI AND M. BATTY J. BORSBOOM BEURDEN, A. BAKEMA AND H. TIJBOSCH -VAN
- 12. vii land-use dynamics 297 with the CLUE-s model 321 PART VI: Land-use simulation for policy analysis n fabric in Eastern Germany 339 355 375 Contents 17. The MOLAND modelling framework for urban and regional 18. Dynamic simulation of land-use change trajectories 19. Beyond growth? Decline of the urba 20. Land-use simulation for water management 21. GIS-based modelling of land-use systems G. ENGELEN, C. LAVALLE, J.I. BARREDO, M. MEULENAND R. WHITE P.H. VERBURG AND K.P. OVERMARS D. HAASE, A. HOLZKÄMPER AND R. SEPPELT J. DEKKERS AND E. KOOMEN P. SHERIDAN, J.O. CHROERS AND E. ROMMELFANGER Index 409 S
- 13. ix Contributing authors Antonio Aledo, Departamento de Sociología y Teoría de la Educación, Universidad de Alicante, Ap. Correos 99, 03080 Alicante, Spain. E-mail: antonio.aledo@ua.es Eyal Ashbel, Department of Geography, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Mount Scopus, 91905 Jerusalem, Israel. E-mail: eashbel@netvision.net.il Aldrik Bakema, Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (MNP), PO Box 303, 3720 AH Bilthoven, The Netherlands. E-mail: aldrik.bakema@mnp.nl , Land Management and Natural Hazards Unit, Joint Research Centre of the European Commission (JRC), TP 261, I-21020 Ispra, Italy. E-mail: jose.barredo@jrc.it Michael Batty, Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA), University College London, 1-19 Torrington Place, London WC1E 6BT, United Kingdom. E-mail: mbatty@geog.ucl.ac.uk Juan Bellot, Departamento de Ecología, Universidad de Alicante, Ap. Correos 99, 03080 Alicante, Spain. E-mail: juan.bellot@ua.es Adi Ben-Nun, Department of Geography, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Mount Scopus, 91905 Jerusalem, Israel. E-mail: bennun@cc.huji.ac.il Patrick Bogaert, Département d’Agronomie, Université Catholique de Louvain, Place Croix du Sud 2, B-1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium. E-mail: bogaert@enge.ucl.ac.be Andreu Bonet, Departamento de Ecología, Universidad de Alicante, Ap. Correos 99, 03080 Alicante, Spain. E-mail: andreu@ua.es José I. Barredo
- 14. x Contributing authors Judith Borsboom-van Beurden, Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (MNP), PO Box 303, 3720 AH Bilthoven, The Netherlands. E-mail: judith.borsboom@mnp.nl Matthias Bürgi, Research Unit of Land Use Dynamics, Swiss Federal Research Institute (WSL), Zürcherstrasse 111, 8903 Birmensdorf, Switzerland. E-mail: matthias.buergi@wsl.ch Giancarlo Carrai, SVALTEC S.r.l., Via del Campofiore 106, 50136 Florence, Italy. E-mail: gc.carrai@svaltec.it João Corte-Real, Centro de Geofísica de Évora e Departamento de Física da Universidade de Évora, Rua Romão Ramalho, 59, 7000 Évora, Portugal. E-mail: jmcr@uevora.pt Jasper Dekkers, Department of Spatial Economics/SPINlab, Vrije Universiteit, De Boelelaan 1105, 1081 HV, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. E-mail: jdekkers@feweb.vu.nl Nicolas Dendoncker, Département de Géographie, Université Catholique de Louvain, Place L. Pasteur 3, B-1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium. E-mail: dendoncker@geog.ucl.ac.be Tomaz Dentinho, Gabinete de Gestão e Conservação da Natureza, Departamento de Ciências Agrárias, Universidade dos Açores, 9701-851 Angra do Heroísmo, Portugal. E-mail: tomaz.dentinho@mail.angra.uac.pt Denise Eisenhuth, Departamento de Ecología, Universidad de Alicante, Ap. Correos 99, 03080 Alicante, Spain. E-mail: d.m.eisenhuth@ua.es Guy Engelen, Centre for Integrated Environmental Studies, Flemish Institute for Technological Research (VITO), Boeretang 200, BE-2400 Mol, Belgium. E-mail: guy.engelen@vito.be Dick Ettema, Faculty of Geosciences, Utrecht University, PO Box 80115, 3508 TC Utrecht, The Netherlands. E-mail: d.ettema@geo.uu.nl Daniel Felsenstein, Department of Geography, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Mount Scopus, 91905 Jerusalem, Israel. E-mail: msdfels@mscc.huji.ac.il
- 15. xi Chang-Chun Feng, Center of Real Estate Research and Appraisal, Peking University, Rm. 3273, Bld. Yifuerlou, 100871 Beijing, China. E- mail: fcc@urban.pku.edu.cn Naftali Goldshlager, Soil Erosion Station, Israeli Ministry of Agriculture, Ruppin Institute, Post. Emek-Hefer 40250, Israel. E-mail: gold_n@macam.ac.il Joana Gonçalves, Gabinete de Gestão e Conservação da Natureza, Departamento de Ciências Agrárias, Universidade dos Açores, 9701-851 Angra do Heroísmo, Portugal. E-mail: joanagoncalves78@gmail.com Dagmar Haase, Department of Applied Landscape Ecology, Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ), Permoserstrasse 15, D-04318 Leipzig, Germany. E-mail: dagmar.haase@ufz.de Stephen Hallett, National Soil Resources Institute, Cranfield University at Silsoe, MK45 4DT Bedfordshire, United Kingdom. E-mail: s.hallett@Cranfield.ac.uk Anna M. Hersperger, Research Unit of Land Use Dynamics, Swiss Federal Research Institute (WSL), Zürcherstrasse 111, 8903 Birmensdorf, Switzerland. E-mail: anna.hersperger@wsl.ch Peter Heuberger, Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (MNP), PO Box 303, 3720 AH Bilthoven, The Netherlands. E-mail: peter.heuberger@mnp.nl Annelie Holzkämper, Department of Applied Landscape Ecology, Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ), Permoserstrasse 15, D-04318 Leipzig, Germany. E-mail: annelie.holzkaemper@ufz.de Louisa J.M. Jansen, Land/natural resources consultant, Via Girolamo Dandini 21, 00154 Rome, Italy. E-mail: Louisa.Jansen@tin.it Kor de Jong, Faculty of Geosciences, Utrecht University, PO Box 80115, 3508 TC Utrecht, The Netherlands. E-mail: k.dejong@geo.uu.nl Eric Koomen, Department of Spatial Economics/SPINlab, Vrije Universiteit, De Boelelaan 1105, 1081 HV, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. E-mail: ekoomen@feweb.vu.nl Contributing authors
- 16. xii Marianne Kuijpers-Linde, Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (MNP), PO Box 303, 3720 AH Bilthoven, The Netherlands. E- mail: marianne.kuijpers@mnp.nl Carlo Lavalle, Land Management and Natural Hazards Unit, Joint Research Centre of the European Commission (JRC), TP 261, I-21020 Ispra, Italy. E-mail: carlo.lavalle@jrc.it Wolfgang Loibl, Austrian Research Centers - ARC Systems Research GmbH, Donau-City-Strasse 1, 1200 Vienna, Austria. E-mail: wolfgang.loibl@arcs.ac.at Willem Loonen, Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (MNP), PO Box 303, 3720 AH Bilthoven, The Netherlands. E-mail: willem.loonen@mnp.nl Pedro Lourenço, Departmento de Ciências e Engenharia do Ambiente, Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Campus do Monte de Caparica, 2829-516 Caparica, Portugal. E-mail: pmbl@fct.unl.pt Subrata K. Mandal, National Institute of Public Finance and Policy, 18/2 Satsang Vihar Rd. Special Institutional Area, 110067 New Delhi, India. E-mail: Subrata@nipfp.org.in Maarten van der Meulen, Research Institute for Knowledge Systems (RIKS), PO Box 463, 6200 AL Maastricht, The Netherlands. E-mail: maarten@riks.nl João Pedro Nunes, Departamento Ciências e Engenharia do Ambiente, Faculdade Ciências e Tecnologia, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Campus do Monte de Caparica, 2829-516 Caparica, Portugal. E- mail: jpcn@fct.unl.pt Koen P. Overmars, Department of Environmental Sciences, Wageningen University, PO Box 47, 6700 AA Wageningen, the Netherlands. E-mail: koen.overmars@wur.nl Mario Köstl, Austrian Research Centers - ARC Systems Research GmbH, Donau-City-Strasse 1, 1200 Vienna, Austria. E-mail: mario.koestl@arcs.ac.at Contributing authors
- 17. xiii Eike Rommelfanger, Institute of Biometry and Population Genetics, Justus Liebig University, Heinrich-Buff-Ring 26-32, D-35390 Gießen, Germany. E-mail: eike.f.rommelfanger@agrar.uni-giessen.de Mark Rounsevell, Départment of Géographie, Université Catholique de Louvain, Place L. Pasteur 3, B-1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium. E- mail: rounsevell@geog.ucl.ac.be Juan Rafael Sánchez, Departamento de Ecología, Universidad de Alicante, Ap. Correos 99, 03080 Alicante, Spain. E-mail: jr.sanchez@ua.es Henk J. Scholten, Department of Spatial Economics/SPINlab, Vrije Universiteit, De Boelelaan 1105, 1081 HV, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. E-mail: hscholten@feweb.vu.nl Jan Ole Schroers, Institute of Agricultural and Food Systems Management, Justus Liebig University, Senckenbergstrasse 3, D-35390 Gießen, Germany. E-mail: jan.o.schroers@agrar.uni-giessen.de Júlia Seixas, Departmento de Ciências e Engenharia do Ambiente, Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Campus do Monte de Caparica, 2829-516 Caparica, Portugal. E-mail: mjs@fct.unl.pt Ralf Seppelt, Department of Applied Landscape Ecology, Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ), Permoserstrasse 15, D-04318 Leipzig, Germany. E-mail: ralf.seppelt@ufz.de Patrick Sheridan, Institute of Agricultural and Food Systems Management, Justus Liebig University, Senckenbergstrasse 3, D-35390 Gießen, Germany. E-mail: patrick.sheridan@agrar.uni-giessen.de Massimiliano Petri, Department of Civil Engineering, University of Pisa, Via Diotisalvi 2, 56126 Pisa, Italy. E-mail: m.petri@ing.unipi.it Kampanart Piyathamrongchai, Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA), University College London, 1-19 Torrington Place, London WC1E 6BT, United Kingdom. E-mail: ucfakpi@ucl.ac.uk Juan Peña, Departamento de Ecología, Universidad de Alicante, Ap. Correos 99, 03080 Alicante, Spain. E-mail: jpl@ua.es Contributing authors
- 18. xiv Hanneke Tijbosch, Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (MNP), PO Box 303, 3720 AH Bilthoven, The Netherlands. E-mail: hanneke.tijbosch@falw.vu.nl Harry Timmermans, Urban Planning Group/EIRASS, Eindhoven University of Technology, PO Box 513, 5600 MB Eindhoven, The Netherlands. E-mail: h.j.p.timmermans@bwk.tue.nl Tanja Tötzer, Austrian Research Centers - ARC Systems Research GmbH, Donau-City-Strasse 1, 1200 Vienna, Austria. E-mail: tanja.toetzer@arcs.ac.at Peter H. Verburg, Department of Environmental Sciences, Wageningen University, PO Box 47, 6700 AA Wageningen, The Netherlands. E-mail: peter.verburg@wur.nl Roger White, Department of Geography, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John’s, Newfoundland A1B 3X9, Canada. E-mail: roger@mun.ca Zhi-Gang Wu, Center of Real Estate Research and Appraisal, Peking University, Rm. 3273, Bld. Yifuerlou, 100871 Beijing, China. E- mail: wuzhigang@pku.edu.cn Su-Hong Zhou, Center for Urban and Regional Studies, School of Geography and Planning, Zhongshan University, 510275 Guangzhou (Canton), China. E-mail: eeszsh@zsu.edu.cn Klaus Steinnocher, Austrian Research Centers - ARC Systems Research GmbH, Donau-City-Strasse 1, 1200 Vienna, Austria. E-mail: klaus.steinnocher@arcs.ac.at John Stillwell, School of Geography, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, United Kingdom. E-mail: j.c.h.stillwell@leeds.ac.uk Maxim Shoshany, Department of Transportation and Geoinformation Engineering, Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Technion Israel Institute of Technology, 32000 Haifa, Israel. E-mail: maximsh@techunix.technion.ac.il Michael Sonis, Department of Geography, Bar-Ilan University, 52900 Ramat-Gan, Israel. E-mail: sonism@mail.biu.ac.il Contributing authors
- 19. Preface The transformation of land use and land cover is driven by a range of different factors and mechanisms. Climate, technology and economics are key determinants of land-use change at different spatial and temporal scales. Whilst the implications of climatic warming at a global level are hugely worrying for low lying parts of the world, the processes of urbanisation continue in a seemingly uninterrupted manner. As time goes by, the use of land in both natural and man-made environments is influenced by the pressures associated with development. The demand for land for new residential housing in northwest European countries has been a huge challenge for governments striving to protect greenfield sites in recent years, whilst brownfield regeneration has been a common response to the decline of staple manufacturing in older industrial heartlands. The variety of forces that drive change in the use of land is extensive and complex, including spatial planning policies designed at local, regional, national and supra- national levels. Given this complexity and in order to understand the mechanisms of change and the impact of policies, researchers and practitioners have turned their attention to formulating, calibrating and testing models that simulate land-use dynamics. These land-use change models help us to understand the characteristics and interdependencies of the components that constitute spatial systems. Moreover, when utilized in a predictive capacity, they provide valuable insights into possible land-use configurations in the future. Models of land-use change incorporate concepts and knowledge from a wide range of disciplines. Geography, as a spatial science, contributes significantly to the understanding of land-use change whilst demography and economics help explain underlying trends. Model building relies heavily on mathematics and (geographical) information science, but also includes many elements from the softer sciences, such as management studies and environmental science. This book offers a cross-sectional overview of current research progress in the field of land-use modelling. The contributions that are included in the chapters of the book range from methodology and model calibration to the xv
- 20. xvi Preface actual application of systems and studies of recent policy implementation and evaluation. The contributors originate from academic and applied research institutes around the world and thus offer an international mix of theoretical and practical perspectives in different case study contexts. The book is an indispensable guide for researchers and practitioners interested The Editors in state-of-the-art land-use modelling, its background and its application. special website (www.lumos.info/ModellingLand-UseChange/Exercises.htm) provides demonstration versions of well-known land-use models that give detailed insights into the way these models work. Additional exercises and assignments help students to critically assess the potential of these instruments. A January, 2007
- 21. Acknowledgements xvii This book is the result of the joint efforts of many individuals and organisations. We are particularly grateful to the authors and researchers that contributed the text and educational materials for the book. Special thanks go to the graphics team in the School of Geography at the University of Leeds for improving the original maps, graphs and diagrams and Rosan van Wilgenburg of the SPINlab at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam for compiling the educational material available from the special website. In addition, we thank the Dutch National research programme ‘Climate Changes Spatial Planning’ for sponsoring part of the work involved in editing the book. Furthermore, we would like to thank the Organising Committee of the European Regional Science Association for allowing a special ‘Modelling Land-Use Change’ session to be held at the ERSA2005 conference in Amsterdam. It was the success of this occasion that provided the inspiration for the book. Finally, the first editor is grateful to the SIGTE- group at the Universitat de Girona, Catalunya, for hosting him during the last months of 2005 when the foundations of this book were established.
- 22. Chapter 1 MODELLING LAND-USE CHANGE Theories and methods E. Koomen1 and J. Stillwell2 1 Department of Spatial Economics/SPINlab, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands; 2 School of Geography, University of Leeds, UK Abstract: This first chapter explains some of the basic theoretical ideas, concepts and methodologies that underpin the modelling of land-use change. It represents an overview of the types of approaches that have been adopted by researchers hitherto. It also provides a rationale for the structure of the book and a synopsis of the contents that follow. Key words: Land-use change modelling; theory; methodology; book structure. 1. INTRODUCTION The existence of the well-known computer-game, SIM-CityTM (http://simcity.ea.com/), has taken the modelling of land-use change beyond its original domain of researchers and policymakers. Simulating the complex interaction of natural and social systems has now come within reach of computer games enthusiasts, both young and old. However, the popularity of the products generated by the games industry has not stretched as far as the land-use models that have been developed by researchers and planning practitioners. Some commentators might suggest that, during the last decade, these systems have tended to remain relatively under-used ‘black boxes’, producing little more than nicely coloured maps. Perhaps the lack of attention to the development of useful applications in the field of land use is related to the extensive array of existing models, the different approaches they take, and the relative complexity of their underpinning theories and methods of application. E. Koomen et al. (eds.), Modelling Land-Use Change, 1–21. © 2007 Springer.
- 23. 2 This book aims to address this paradox by providing an overview of recent land-use modelling efforts and by clarifying their background and application possibilities. It does so by presenting a wide range of approaches (both geographically and thematically) that analyse and explain past land- use changes and simulate possible future changes. As an initial introduction to the simulation of land-use change, we begin with a discussion of some of the basic characteristics of land-use change models and the theories and methods on which they are based. Thereafter the structure of the book is explained and a synopsis of its contents is given. 2. CHARACTERISING LAND-USE CHANGE MODELS Land-use change is a complex, dynamic process that links together natural and human systems. It has direct impacts on soil, water and atmosphere (Meyer and Turner, 1994) and is thus directly related to many environmental issues of global importance. The large-scale deforestations and subsequent transformations of agricultural land in the tropics are examples of land-use change with strong likely impacts on biodiversity, soil degradation and the earth’s ability to support human needs (Lambin et al., 2003). Land-use change is also one of the important factors in the climate change cycle and the relationship between the two is interdependent; changes in land use may affect the climate whilst climatic change will also influence future land-use (Dale, 1997; Watson et al., 2000). On a smaller scale, in the densely populated parts of the urbanised western world, land- use change is the expression of continuing urbanisation pressure on ever scarcer open spaces (e.g. Bell and Irwin, 2002; Rietveld and Wagtendonk, 2004), many of which have been designated by planning authorities as greenfield areas for conservation reasons. This issue is often referred to as urban sprawl, a topic of debate in the United States especially (e.g. Brueckner, 2000; Glaeser and Kahn, 2004). Modelling land-use change helps understand the processes of continuing urbanisation and can also be of value in informing policymakers of possible future conditions under different scenarios. Land-use change models can therefore be defined as tools to support the analysis of the causes and consequences of land-use change (Verburg et al., 2004a). Many authors (e.g. Lambin et al., 2001) make a distinction between the land cover that can be observed (e.g. grass, building) and the land use, the actual use to which the land is put (e.g. grassland for livestock grazing, residential area). For convenience, we use the term land use predominantly in this book, referring to both land cover and actual land use. E. Koomen and J. Stillwell
- 24. 1. Modelling land-use change 3 Recent inventories of operational models for land-use change are numerous. Briassoulis (2000) offers a very extensive discussion of the most common land-use change models and their theoretical backgrounds. Waddell and Ulfarsson (2003) and Verburg et al. (2004a) present more concise overviews that focus on the future directions of research in this field, whilst more detailed, technical information on the actual models is provided by Agarwal et al. (2002) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA, 2000). All inventories show a very heterogeneous group of instruments with considerable differences regarding their background, starting points, range of applications et cetera. We will refrain here from classifying existing models, but rather discuss a number of characteristics that can be used to differentiate the most common modelling approaches. One of the most important distinctions refers to static as opposed to dynamic models. Static (or cross-sectional) models directly calculate the situation at a given point in time, whereas dynamic models work with intermediate time-steps, each of which might become the starting-point for calculating the subsequent situation. Dynamic modelling, therefore, takes possible developments during the simulation period into account, providing a richer behaviour and the possibility to better mimic actual spatial developments. Land-use change models can also be characterised as dealing with either transformation or allocation. Transformation models start from the current land use and simulate the possible conversion into another land-use type, e.g. based on a transformation probability or the status of surrounding locations. Allocation models, on the other hand, allocate a certain type of land use to a location based on its characteristics. Current land use may thus be one of the factors influencing locational characteristics, but it is not necessarily preserved in future land use. This approach to simulation basically starts with an empty map. From a theoretical perspective, there is a clear difference between models starting from a direct emphasis on land use and those whose initial consideration is the land user. Many models focus purely on land use, merely simulating its state at a certain location. Other approaches take land users as the starting point and try to understand their behaviour. The description of the spatial decisions of (groups of) individuals is then used to deduce the land-use changes. Approaches to simulating land-use change may be either deterministic or probabilistic. The former applies strict cause-effect relations, whereas the latter considers the probability of land-use changes taking place. The essence of this second approach is the introduction of an element of uncertainty. A type of use is attached to a location based on an estimated probability, rather than following a straightforward deductive approach. In some cases, a
- 25. 4 random error-term is added to express the uncertainty in the explanatory factors. Another common distinction is the one made between sector-specific and integrated models. Sector-specific models focus on one part of the land-use system (e.g. housing, employment, agriculture) and describe that part as precisely as possible. Integrated models consider the mutual relationships between these sectors, thus approaching the land-use system in a very comprehensive and inter-dependent (or systems-oriented) manner. Truly integrated models also incorporate the feedbacks of the land-use system with other related systems such as climate, hydrology or transport. In relation to the spatial level of detail, both zones and grids are used. Zones are relatively homogeneous, often irregularly shaped areas or vector polygons, e.g. socio-economic or administrative regions that more often than not have little functional coherence. Grids, on the other hand, are collections of (mostly square) cells defined in a regular raster pattern that are often used in geographical information systems (GIS). Models that use grids often make use of geographical information from other sources, thus having access to valuable base data. As land-use change models can differ from each other on all of the above mentioned characteristics, classifying them into homogenous groups is difficult, if not impossible. They do rely, however, on a limited number of basic principles to allocate land use and these theories are discussed in the next section. 3. THEORIES AND METHODS OF LAND-USE MODELLING Models for simulating future land use exist in many different types and forms, but they all rely on a limited number of theories and methods. Economic theories, for example, are often used to explain land-use patterns and their dynamics (e.g. Bockstael and Irwin, 2000; Irwin and Geoghegan, 2001). The underlying idea is that those who can afford the most money for the land are the ones using it. But disciplines such as geography and mathematics have also contributed to the understanding and simulation of changes in land use. In order to provide some background for the models that will be presented in later chapters of the book, we introduce some of the basic principles of land-use modelling. For an introduction to a number of additional aspects that are relevant for the simulation of land-use change, such as policy perspectives, driving forces, data considerations, evaluation and visualisation methods, the reader is referred to a previous text, Land Use Simulation for Europe (Stillwell and Scholten, 2001). E. Koomen and J. Stillwell
- 26. 1. Modelling land-use change 5 3.1 Economic principles For a number of reasons, land is a special economic asset. Firstly, the supply of land is fixed, creating specific demand-supply relations. Secondly, every parcel of land has a fixed location with its associated unique features in terms of soil quality, gradient, altitude, accessibility et cetera. The marketable asset is therefore far from homogeneous, severely hampering the price-making analysis. Thirdly, the land use at a certain location influences its surroundings. The impact may be either negative or positive; basic infrastructure or industry causes visual disturbance for many, but small-scale agriculture may increase the aesthetic or natural value of the landscape. This impact, that economists call an externality of land use, often gives rise to government intervention. Examples of this intervention include prohibition of dwellings in the proximity of big industrial estates or airports, economic activities that are relocated to the outskirts of cities, or farmers that receive subsidies to provide ‘nature’ as an additional product under sub-optimal agrarian conditions. Combined with the limited supply and the heterogeneity of land, the externalities and the resulting government interventions are expressed in a segmented land market, where different prices are used for ‘green’ (agriculture, nature) and ‘red’ (housing, employment, infrastructure) functions and where considerable spatial price differences exist within sector-specific markets (e.g. Buurman et al., 2001). The focus on land in economic theories has changed over time. The early and well-known theories of Ricardo and, in a more spatial context, Von Thünen, have laid the foundation of land-price and land-use theories. These are to a certain extent still valid and used in current research. Ricardo (1817, in Kruijt et al., 1990) explained land prices in terms of differences in soil fertility levels or, more generally speaking, in terms of land quality. Better quality land is more profitable than lower quality land, and this difference leads to payment of a higher price for the land. Von Thünen (1826) focused on the impact of distance and hence transportation costs, to explain land-use patterns and land prices. Current economic analysis of land use often relationship between urban land use and the value of urban land. Individual households and companies weigh up the land price, transportation costs and the amount of land they need. This leads to a simple model with decreasing land prices as you move away from the city centre. The land use resulting from these assumptions is that of a typical monocentric city. Commercial activities are concentrated in the city centre (central business district); industrial and housing functions will have less money available for a central location and will select a location at a greater distance from the centre; the takes bid rent theory (Alonso, 1964) as a starting point, focusing on the
- 27. 6 edge of the city is identified where the offer of the urban bidders is equal to that of the agrarian bidders. Another important concept related to economic science and used to explain land-use patterns is discrete choice theory. Nobel prize winner McFadden has made important contributions to this approach of modelling choices between mutually exclusive alternatives (e.g. McFadden, 1978). In this theory, the probability that an individual selects a certain alternative is dependent on the utility of that specific alternative in relation to the total utility of all alternatives. This probability is, given its definition, expressed as a value between 0 and 1, but it will never reach these extremes. When translated into land use, this approach explains the probability of a certain type of land use at a certain location based on the utility of that location for that specific type of use in relation to the total utility of all possible uses. The utility of a location can be interpreted as the suitability for a certain use. This can be formulated as follows: ∑ = k S S ci ck ci e e X * * / β β (1) where: Xci is the probability of cell c being used for land-use type i; e is the base of the natural logarithm (= 2.71828); Sci is the suitability of cell c for land-use type i; dependent on different factors; Sck is the suitability of cell c for all (k) land-use types; and ß is a parameter to adjust the sensitivity of the model. The suitability of a location for a certain use can be explained by a range of different factors. This may refer, for example, to physical suitability, as is the case with the soil type that largely determines the most profitable type of agricultural use. Other important aspects that influence suitability include accessibility of relevant facilities or spatial policies that will restrict or encourage certain land-use types. Suitability is assessed by potential users and can also be interpreted as a bid price. After all, the user deriving the highest benefit from a location will offer the highest price. The renewed interest for geography in economics (e.g. Krugman, 1999) offers interesting concepts to analyse the spatial interaction between actors (represented by, for example, residences or industries) in terms of centripetal forces leading to concentration, and centrifugal forces leading to a spatial spread of functions. E. Koomen and J. Stillwell
- 28. 1. Modelling land-use change 7 3.2 Spatial interaction This way, the concepts of scale and distance are introduced in the description of spatial relations, indicating that their influence is relative; size matters, especially when distances are small. This simple gravity principle has been adjusted and extended in several different ways. An important extension is the inclusion of more than two objects. The total interaction in a system is supposed to be equal to the sum of all interactions between all pairs of objects or, in other words, the interaction potential of an object is equal to the sum of all potential interactions with other objects. Lowry (1964) was the first to develop an urban land-use model based on two dependent gravity models. The first model relates the population distribution to residential areas on the basis of fixed employment locations. The demand for trade can then be deducted from the population distribution. The second gravity model allocates retail businesses based on the newly determined demand. The changed distribution of services results in an adapted demand for labour force that can be introduced in turn in the population model. This dynamic interaction will continue until a previously defined small amount of allocation difference occurs. The Lowry model is spatially explicit on the level of homogeneous urban zones. Current land-use models display a higher level of detail in both their spatial resolution and allocation principle, but often fall back on this type of model for the sector- specific demand for land. The primary architect of contemporary spatial interaction modelling is Alan Wilson, whose seminal work in the late 1960s (Wilson, 1967) on entropy maximisation led to the inclusion of balancing factors in the gravity model equations that served to ensure constraints were satisfied. A family of models was developed (Wilson, 1970), variants of which could be applied in situations of differing known information. In the context of migration, A classical group of land-use models is based on spatial interaction modelling theory. Spatial interaction in a social, geographical context refers to every movement in space as a consequence of a human process (Haynes and Fotheringham, 1984). By analogy with Newton’s first law, these models assume that the interaction between two entities depends on their own mass (or size) and is inversely proportionate to the distance between them. Early applications of this principle can be found in studies of migration (Ravenstein, 1885; Young, 1924) and trade (Reilly, 1931). Their main assumption was that the volume of interaction, being migration or commercial transactions between two cities, for example, depended on the size of the two cities and the distance between them. Thus, bigger cities were expected to attract more migrants or trade than smaller ones and this flow of migrants or trade was expected to be strong when distances were small.
- 29. 8 spatial interaction models based on these principles have been extended by Stillwell (1991) and Fotheringham (1991) and used recently in an applied context to model flows within the UK for the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (Champion et al., 2003). A related type of research focuses on the interaction between land use and transport. Central to this approach is the assumption that land use is influenced by the available infrastructure network and vice versa: the transportation demand depends on the spatial configuration of the different, mostly urban, land-use types. One of the first researchers to model the interdependence of these systems was Putman (1983), but many others have created similar structures, often referred to as LUTI models, more detailed overviews of which are provided in Wegener (1998) and Kanaroglou and Scott (2002), for example. Most of the original LUTI models were based on a classic spatial interaction framework and adopted a relatively coarse zonal scale. In the newest wave of these models, however, research attention has shifted towards activity-based microsimulation (Timmermans, 2003). This is a trend that is also visible in general (non-transport related) land-use change models as will be discussed later. 3.3 Cellular automata The cellular automata (CA) methods deriving from mathematics are very well suited for imitating complex spatial processes on the basis of simple decision rules (Wolfram, 1984). Every cell has a certain state (or function) that is influenced by its surrounding cells as well as the characteristics of the cell itself. The degree and direction of interaction between the functions is determined through so-called transition rules. The application of CA in geographical modelling was originally proposed by Tobler (1979) and the concept has subsequently been applied to model urban form (Batty, 1997; Yeh and Li, 2001), urban growth (Clarke et al., 1997; Couclelis, 1997; Clarke and Gaydos, 1998), land-use planning (Wu, 1998; Li and Yeh, 2000) and urban and regional development and planning (Samat, 2002; Engelen , 1999; White and Engelen, 2000). A strong dimension of this approach is the simulation of the interaction of a location with its direct surroundings that has empirically proven to be an important driver of land-use change (O´Sullivan and Torrens, 2000; Verburg et al., 2004b). A crucial component of this local interaction approach is ‘emergence’, discussed by Holland (1998) amongst others. In CA models this phenomenon refers to global patterns that appear spontaneously from the collective behaviour of individual cells influencing each other. This rich behaviour leads to simulation results that are very hard, if not impossible, to predict from the behaviour of the individual cells. et al. E. Koomen and J. Stillwell
- 30. 1. Modelling land-use change 9 Additional, location-based information is often used in creating the transition rules in CA models, for example relating to the physical suitability or policy restrictions within a cell. The model thus moves beyond the classical focus on spatial interaction to achieve more realistic simulations. Classical CA models have a limited theoretical relationship with the decision-making process that leads to changes in land use. Hence, modern CA applications also incorporate components from other disciplines to obtain a more realistic simulation of land-use changes, an example of which is the Markov model that uses transition probabilities to describe the possible spatial developments of a location (Balzter et al., 1998; Li and Reynolds, 1997). The probability of a cell changing its function is determined here by the initial state of the cell, the surrounding cells and a transition matrix with its transition probabilities. The interesting aspect of this approach is that consecutive changes in land use known from the literature or from experience (e.g. a succession in vegetation types or the changeover from agricultural to residential use) can be included explicitly as being probable whereas other transitions (e.g. industry to agriculture) can be described as being improbable or, in some cases, impossible. The cell changes its status according to these estimated probabilities rather than from the deterministic transition rules of the classical CA models. Another option to control the spatial interaction behaviour of individual cells in CA models is the inclusion of higher level constraints on, for example, the magnitude of land-use changes. This can be implemented through a regional level spatial interaction model as is the case in the Environment Explorer model (White and Engelen, 2000) and related MOLAND framework (Engelen et al., this book). 3.4 Statistical analysis Statistical analysis is an essential tool for almost all models of land-use change. Regression analysis, for example, helps to quantify the contribution of the individual forces that drive land-use change, as demonstrated by Rietveld and Wagtendonk (2004) and Verburg et al. (2004c) and thus provides the information needed to properly calibrate models of land-use change. An important aspect of analysing land-use patterns is addressed in spatial econometrics and relates to issues such as spatial dependency and spatial heterogeneity (Irwin and Geoghegan, 2001). The analysis of spatial dependence may point to structural interdependencies between, for example, land-use types and can be useful in formulating the transition rules in CA- models. See Anselin and Florax (1995) for an extensive discussion of this topic.
- 31. 10 Many examples exist of models that rely solely on a statistical description of observed past land-use changes to simulate future patterns (e.g. Schneider and Pontius, 2001; Serneels and Lambin, 2001). These empirical-statistical models have the advantage of being relatively easy to construct, but they miss a theoretical foundation as no attempt is made to understand and simulate the processes that actually drive land-use change. The applicability of these purely statistical models is therefore limited. They can be used to simulate possible spatial developments within a relatively short time-span under ‘business as usual’ conditions, but they are not suited to simulate possible changes according to diverging socio-economic future scenarios, for example. A combination with theoretical insights in land-use change processes is therefore welcomed to add a notion of causality to statistical models (Veldkamp and Lambin, 2001; Parker et al., 2003). Examples of this combination are provided by Chomitz and Gray (1996) and Geoghegan et al. (2004). 3.5 Optimisation techniques Another modelling approach is optimisation. By applying mathematical optimisation techniques such as linear integer programming or neural networks, the optimal land-use configuration is calculated here given a set of prior conditions, criteria and decision variables (e.g. Aerts, 2002; Pijanowski et al., 2002). The simplest applications aim to optimise a single objective (for example, profit maximisation) for a specific group of decisionmakers (e.g. project developers). But there are also mathematic programming techniques that can determine the optimal solution for different, divergent objectives. This is especially interesting for policymakers who are interested in the optimal configuration of an area based on different, often conflicting, policy goals. This approach is further discussed in Part III of this book. 3.6 Rule-based simulation The central element in rule-based simulation is the imitation of a known process. This approach is generally used in the field of physical sciences and is often applied in combination with a GIS. Rule-based simulation models can be used to imitate processes that can be described by strict, quantitative, location-based rules. These are normally natural processes such as soil erosion or landscape dynamics. The latter is modelled, for example, in the Landscape Modelling Shell (LAMOS, see Lavorel et al., 2000) that integrates a quantitative description of different landscape processes, such as vegetation succession, disturbance and dispersal, to simulate possible landscape-ecological patterns. E. Koomen and J. Stillwell
- 32. 1. Modelling land-use change 11 The rule-based approach has also been applied, however, in studies with a more socio-scientific orientation such as land-use change. Examples of the application of rule-based simulation models include the original California Urban Futures (CUF) model and the What If? system. A typical feature of these models is that they allow users to include explicit decision rules that steer their behaviour (Klosterman and Petit, 2005). This flexible characteristic allows the models to simulate the consequences of spatial decisions and thus makes them useful as planning support tools. CUF (Landis, 1994) simulates alternative residential-development scenarios for cities based on specified policy changes at various levels of government. Projected population growth based on past trends is allocated and the profitability of each land parcel if developed is ascertained based on this demand, but also on user-specified development regulations and incentives. What If? (Klosterman, 1999) is a self-contained visualisation tool that accepts user-defined spatial data, growth rules and parameters to map land-use allocation alternatives. Rule-based simulation is also an important element in many integrated models of global change as described by Alcamo et al. (1998) and Cramer et al. (2001), for example. These models typically apply relatively simple descriptions of the relations between various subsystems to simulate their interaction and assess the resulting state of, for example, land use, vegetation cover or greenhouse gas concentrations. The subsystems (e.g. economy, emissions, vegetation, agriculture and atmosphere) are often modelled in more elaborate, individual models. 3.7 Multi-agent models Human decision making and interaction are the central elements in multi- agent (MA) models. The key concept here is that of the agents or decisionmakers. Parker et al. (2003) define agents as being autonomous, yet sharing an environment through communication and interaction, and they take decisions linking their behaviour to their environment. Autonomy means that the actors control their own actions and internal status in order to achieve their goals. In MA models, as a minimum, actors have a strategy that makes them react to their environment and the actions of other actors. More advanced models of human decision making apply the rational choice theory. These models assume agents being fully informed, taking long-term decisions and having infinite analytical capacities. It is very difficult, however, to combine these models with the decision-making processes related to land-use change. It remains to be seen whether those complex decision-making models can be used to simulate land-use changes. Because of different spatial dependencies and feedback mechanisms, it is virtually impossible for an individual actor to
- 33. 12 consider all possible consequences of his own acts and those of all other actors. Hence, many MA models apply a type of limited rationality for the choice behaviour of their actors (Parker et al., 2003). A recent overview by Berger and Parker (2002) on MA models for land-use changes shows different applications from the whole world on topics such as crop choices, deforestation and urbanisation. The choice behaviour therein is modelled with the assistance of relatively simple rules of thumb (heuristics), limited rationality or (economic) utility functions. MA models appear mainly effective in combination with CA models. The CA part then describes the natural system (the interaction between ecological processes and the physical subsoil), while the MA part describes the human part (choice behaviour of actors). The potential of CA and MA models currently under development in academic institutions to act as planning support systems with practical application in the real world has been reviewed by Torrens (2003). Several examples of this approach are described in Part IV of this book. 3.8 Microsimulation Microsimulation is related to the simulation of processes at the level of individuals. Within land-use models, the idea is to include all individual actors who influence changes in land use. In this sense, this approach deviates from the multi-actor approach that uses a cross-sectional (average) description of the relevant decision-making groups. An important advantage of this method is that land-use changes are modelled on the scale level on which the actual choices are also made. Microsimulation demands enormous amounts of data and therefore computing power to simulate the actions of all relevant individuals. But as more detailed spatial data and faster computers become available, this approach is gaining popularity. For a description of the choice behaviour of individuals, one is often referred to (microeconomic) discrete choice theory, such as is used in the UrbanSim model (Waddell, 2002; Felsenstein et al. this book). The big challenge continues to be the reconciliation of microsimulation with the macro-scale socio-economic processes, such as structural economic and demographic developments (Alberti and Waddell, 2000). 3.9 Application of the theories and methods All of the described theories and methods have their own advantages and disadvantages. The economic approach is useful to model choice behaviour in sector-specific submarkets, like the agricultural or urban land market. CA models on the other hand, are apt to model land-use changes when the interaction with the surroundings is important. This is the case, for example, E. Koomen and J. Stillwell
- 34. 1. Modelling land-use change 13 when physical or ecological aspects are dominant as with deforestation. Optimisation models can be used to determine the optimal land-use configuration according to certain (policy) goals and are mostly applied to inform decision makers of possible solutions for land-use management issues. Table 1-1 links this book’s land-use change models with the theories and methods introduced in this section. Due to the complexity of most of the models, these links are not always straightforward and may even depend on the application that is described. The table merely indicates the prevalent theoretical and methodological background. The models that basically aim at explaining current and past land-use changes (Chapters 6, 7 and 8) offer a relatively straightforward approach, as do the land-use optimisation efforts described in the subsequent three chapters. None of the individual approaches can, however, provide a basis for a comprehensive, integrated and spatially explicit model to simulate future land-use change in a complex modern society. Such models therefore often combine different approaches into one hybrid model as was also advocated by Torrens (2001). The land- use simulation models presented in this book indeed rely on a combination of different theories and methods, as is discussed below. The recently developed models that focus on the behaviour of agents in particular incorporate many theories and methods in their frameworks. The renowned UrbanSim model, discussed in Chapter 12, is an example of an interesting hybrid model that combines a microsimulation approach with discrete choice theory for the location choice of individual households and general economic theory for macro-economic evolution. Statistical analysis is used to actually quantify the behaviour of these agents. The new PUMA model (Chapter 14) also combines an agent-based approach with economic theory (utility-maximising functions) and statistical analysis to describe the choice behaviour of households. Most of the other much applied integrated land-use simulation models also rely on a combination of theories and methods. The LUMOS toolbox (Chapter 16), for example, provides a framework for land-use simulation that, amongst others, contains the Environment Explorer and Land Use Scanner models. The former model is comparable to the MOLAND modelling framework (Chapter 17) and is essentially a CA model, but it is combined with a spatial interaction model to constrain regional land-use demand. Statistical analyses and expert judgement are furthermore used to estimate local transition potentials. The Land Use Scanner (Chapters 16 and 20) applies an allocation algorithm that is based on economic, discrete choice theory. The additional application of constraints on regional demand and the supply of land, however, enforce a bidding process that is in line with other economic (bid-rent) theory. This model also relies on expert
- 35. 14 judgement to define local suitability and prospected claims for the different land-use types following the specified scenario conditions, adding a rule- based element to the simulations. The CLUE-s model (Chapter 18) provides a framework for land-use simulation that, depending on the constructed configuration, can contain elements of statistics, cellular automata and a rule-based approach. Table 1-1. Theoretical and methodological background and case study area of the land-use simulation models presented in this book Model name or method (chapter number) Economic principles Spatial interaction Cellular Automata Statistical analysis Optimisation Rule-based Multi-agent models Microsimulation Described case study area Markov model (6) X Marina Baixa, Spain Statistical analysis (7) X Southern Belgium Spatial interaction (8) X Corvo island, Azores, Portugal Genetic algorithm (9) X Netherlands Linear programming (10) X Hawalbag, India GeneticLand (11) X Southern Portugal UrbanSim (12) X X X X Tel Aviv region, Israel Multi-agent simulation (13) X X X Rhine valley, Austria PUMA (14) X X X X Randstad, Netherlands DSSM (15) X X X Chiang Mai, Thailand LUMOS (16) X X X X Netherlands MOLAND (17) X X Urban areas across Europe CLUE-s (18) X X X Netherlands and Malaysia SELES environment (19) X X Leipzig-Grünau, Germany Land Use Scanner (20) X X Netherlands and Elbe area ProLand and UPAL X X Hesse, Germany Note that the first chapters of the book are not included in this table because they focus on the analysis of land-use change rather than its simulation. LUMOS and CLUE-s provide frameworks for land-use simulation consisting of various models and configuration possibilities that each rely on different theoretical and methodological backgrounds. 4. STRUCTURE OF THE BOOK This book presents a cross-sectional overview of recent research progress related to the modelling of land-use change. The contributions range from analysing past land-use changes to simulating future changes to help policymakers take their decisions. The case studies that are presented in the (21) E. Koomen and J. Stillwell
- 36. 1. Modelling land-use change 15 book originate from academic and applied research institutes around the world and are grouped in coherent parts that roughly correspond to different phases of model development. These phases consist of the analysis of the land-use change process, the exploration of new methods and theoretical insights and the actual application of land-use simulation models. Each of the phases is subdivided in two parts, providing a total of six parts for the remaining 20 chapters as is explained below and presented in Figure 1-1. Figure 1-1. Basic layout of the book consisting of six coherent parts. It is clear that any model development should start with a thorough analysis of land-use trends and their driving forces and this is the topic of Part I. Louisa Jansen, Giancarlo Carrai and Massimiliano Petri perform an analysis of the land-use change dynamics at cadastral parcel level in Albania. They apply an object-oriented geo-database approach to describe and understand spatial developments in the turbulent time of transition from a socialist state to a decentralised, market-oriented economy. Anna Hersperger and Matthias Bürgi analyse the driving forces of landscape change in the urbanizing Limmat Valley, Switzerland based on 70-year time series of historic maps. Michael Sonis, Maxim Shoshany and Naftali Goldshlager offer a new method of matrix land-use analysis for analysing landscape change in the Carmel area of Israel. Zhi-Gang Wu, Su-Hong Zhou and Chang-Chun Feng describe land-use development in one the fastest developing regions in the world: the Pearl River Delta metropolis, China. They point at the friction between the legal framework and the rapid economic changes. In Part II, various explanatory models of land-use change are presented. These models typically analyse, explain and simulate land-use changes from
- 37. 16 a thorough study of past developments. Juan Peña and colleagues analyse the trends and driving factors in land-use change in Marina Baixa, Spain and go on to develop a simple Markov chain model to simulate the possible future state of the area. Nicolas Dendoncker, Patrick Bogaert and Mark Rounsevell employ a number of statistical techniques to empirically derive suitability maps that are then used to downscale aggregated land-use data. Joana Gonçalves and Tomaz Dentinho present a spatial interaction model that explains the historic development of a small island of the Azores group by means of a simulation of land-use changes in the past 400 years. The book’s attention then shifts towards the exploration of new methodological and theoretical insights in land-use modelling. Specific attention is paid in Part III to recent research progress in optimisation modelling. Willem Loonen, Peter Heuberger and Marianne Kuijpers-Linde demonstrate the benefits of genetic algorithms for optimising land-use patterns in two different environmental problems. Subrata Mandal uses linear programming in a case study of a watershed in the Indian Himalaya to examine sustainable land-use and water management in mountain ecosystems. Júlia Seixas, João Pedro Nunes, Pedro Lourenço and João Corte-Real report their experience of using evolutionary algorithms for optimising land use from the perspectives of soil erosion and carbon sequestration. Part IV concentrates on the incorporation of new modelling approaches in land-use simulations. Approaches such as microsimulation, agent-based modelling and dynamic simulation have received a lot of attention in recent land-use modelling research and suggest much promise for further model development. Daniel Felsenstein, Eyal Ashbel and Adi Ben-Nun describe the incorporation of a microsimulation approach in the well-known UrbanSim model to simulate employment deconcentration in the Tel Aviv region. Wolfgang Loibl, Tanja Tötzer, Mario Köstl and Klaus Steinnocher present an urban growth model that simulates location decisions of households and company start-ups, based on a multi-agent system. Dick Ettema, Kor de Jong, Harry Timmermans and Aldrik Bakema outline the modelling framework that underpins PUMA, a multi-agent modelling system for urban systems. Kampanart Piyathamrongchai and Michael Batty discuss a new model that integrates the local dynamics of CA with a regional-level dynamic simulation model. In the last two parts of the book the emphasis shifts from research progress to the actual application of land-use simulation models. Part V introduces several well-established operational land-use simulation models that can be considered the current state of the art. Judith Borsboom-van Beurden, Aldrik Bakema and Hanneke Tijbosch describe the LUMOS land- use modelling system that they apply in land-use related environmental E. Koomen and J. Stillwell
- 38. 1. Modelling land-use change 17 impact assessments in the Netherlands. Guy Engelen and others introduce the MOLAND modelling framework for urban and regional land-use dynamics that was applied in many urban regions in Europe. Peter Verburg and Koen Overmars explain the CLUE-s model for dynamic simulation of land-use change trajectories by means of two scenario-based case studies. In the final section of the book (Part VI), a number of recent case study applications of land-use simulation for policy analysis are outlined. Dagmar Haase, Annelie Holzkämper and Ralf Seppelt look at residential vacancies and demolition in urban land-use planning policy in Eastern Germany. Jasper Dekkers and Eric Koomen provide an assessment of the suitability of scenario-based modelling by simulating future land use for water management. Finally, Patrick Sheridan, Eike Rommelfanger and Jan Ole Schroers review EU Common Agricultural Policy reform and evaluate its impact on agricultural land use and plant species richness. REFERENCES Aerts, J. (2002) Spatial Decision Support for Resource Allocation, PhD Dissertation, Universiteit van Amsterdam. Agarwal, C., Green, G.M., Grove, J.M., Evans, T.P. and Schweik, C.M. (2002) A review and assessment of land-use change models: dynamics of space, time, and human choice. Gen. Tech. Rep. NE-297, Newtown Square, PA: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Northeastern Research Station. P.61. Alberti, M. and Wadell, P. (2000) An integrated urban development and ecological simulation model, Integrated Assesment, 1: 215–227. Alcamo, J., Leemans, R. and Kreileman, E. (1998) Global Change Scenarios of the 21st Century. Results from the IMAGE 2.1 Model. Elsevier, Amsterdam, P. 296. Alonso, W.A. (1964) Location and Land Use: Toward a General Theory of Land Rent, Harvard University Press, Cambridge. Anselin, L., Florax, R. (eds) (1995) New Directions in Spatial Econometrics, Springer, Berlin. Balzter, H., Braun, P.W. and Kohler, W. (1998) Cellular automata models for vegetation dynamics, Ecological Modelling, 107(2/3): 113–125. Batty, M. (1997) Cellular automata and urban form: a primer, Journal of the American Planning Association, 63(2): 266 274. Bell, K.P. and Irwin, E.G. (2002) Spatially explicit micro-level modelling of land use change at the rural–urban interface, Agricultural Economics, 27(3): 217–232. – Together with this book a website (www.lumos.info/ModellingLand- UseChange/Exercises.htm) has been developed that provides a number of exercises covering the analysis of land-use change, general modelling approaches and demonstration versions of some of the well-known land-use models discussed in this book. The provided land use modelling software and included base-data give detailed insights into the way these models work. The related exercises and assignments help students to critically assess the potential of these instruments. Further installation instructions and explanatory texts are available on the website.
- 39. 18 Berger, T. and Parker, D.C. (2002) Examples of specific research, in Parker, D.C., Berger, T. and Manson, S.M. (eds) Agent-Based Models of Land-Use and Land-Cover Change: Report and Review of an International Workshop, Irvine, California October 4–7, LUCC Report Series No. 6. Bloomington, Indiana, LUCC International Project Office. Bockstael, N.E. and Irwin, E.G. (2000) Economics and the land use-environment link, in Folmer, H. and Tietenberg, T. (eds) The International Yearbook of Environmental and Resource Economics 1999/2000, Edward Elgar Publishing, Northampton, MA, pp. 1–54. Briassoulis, H. (2000) Analysis of land use The web-book of regional science Regional Research Institute, West Virginia University, USA. Brueckner, J.K. (2000) Urban sprawl: diagnosis and remedies, International Regional Science Review, 23: 160–171. Buurman, J.J.G., Rietveld, P. and Scholten, H.J. (2001) The land market: spatial economic perspective, Chapter 6 in Stillwell, J.C.H. and Scholten, H.J. (eds) Land Use Simulation for Europe, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, pp. 65–82. Clarke, K. and L. Gaydos (1998) Loose-coupling a cellular automation model and GIS: long- term urban growth prediction for San Fransisco and Washington/Baltimore, International Journal of Geographical Information Science, 12(7): 699–714. Clarke, K.C., Hoppen, C. and Gaydos, L. (1997) A self-modifying cellular automaton model model of historical urbanisation in the San Francisco Bay Area, Environment and Planning B, 24: 247–261. Champion, A., Bramley, G., Fotheringham, A.S., Macgill, J. and Rees, P. (2003) A migration modelling system to support government decision-making, Chapter 15 in Geertman, S. and Stillwell, J.C.H. (eds) Planning Support Systems in Practice, Springer, Berlin, pp. 269–290. Chomitz, K.M. and Gray, D.A. (1996) Roads, land use and deforestation: a spatial model applied to Belize, The World Bank Economic Review, 10: 487 512. Couclelis, H. (1997) From cellular automata to urban models: new principles for model development and implementation, Environment and Planning B, 24: 165–174. Cramer, W., Bondeau, A., Woodward, F.I., Prentice, I.C., Betts, R.A., Brovkin, V., Cox, P.M., Fisher, V., Foley, J., Friend, A.D., Kucharik, C., Lomas, M.R., Ramankutty, N., Sitch, S., Smith, B., White, A. and Young-Molling, C. (2001) Global response of terrestrial ecosystems structure and function to CO2 and climate change: results from six dynamic global vegetation models, Global Change Biology, 7: 357–374 Dale, V.H. (1997) The relationship between land-use change and climate change, Ecological Applications, 7(3): 753–769. Engelen, G., Geertman, S., Smits, P. and Wessels, C. (1999) Dynamic GIS and strategic physical planning support: a practical application, Chapter 5 in Stillwell, J.C.H., Geertman, S. and Openshaw, S. (eds) Geographical Information and Planning, Springer, Berlin, pp. 87–111. Fotheringham, A.S. (1991) Migration and spatial structure; the development of the competing destinations model, Chapter 4 in Stillwell, J.C.H. and Congdon, P. (eds) Migration Models Macro and Micro Approaches, Belhaven Press, London, pp. 57–72. Geoghegan, J. Schneider L. and Vance, C. (2004) Temporal dynamics and spatial scales: Modeling deforestation in the southern Yucatán peninsular region, GeoJournal, 61(4): 353–363. Glaeser, E. and Kahn, M. (2004) Sprawl and urban growth, in Henderson, V. and Thisse, J.F. (eds) Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics: Cities and Geography, Handbooks in Economics, Volume 4, Elsevier North-Holland, Amsterdam. Haynes, K.E. and Fotheringham, A.S. (1984) Gravity and Spatial Interaction Models, Sage Publications, Beverly Hills. Holland, J.H. (1998) Emergence: From Chaos to Order. Perseus Books, Reading, MA. change: theoretical and modeling approaches, in Jackson, W.R. (ed) E. Koomen and J. Stillwell
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- 43. PART I: ANALYSIS OF LAND-USE TRENDS AND THEIR DRIVING FORCES
- 44. Chapter 2 LAND-USE CHANGE AT CADASTRAL PARCEL LEVEL IN ALBANIA An object-oriented geo-database approach to analyse spatial developments in a period of transition (1991-2003) L.J.M. Jansen1 , G. Carrai2 and M. Petri3 1 Land/natural resources consultant, Rome, Italy; 2 SVALTEC S.r.l., Florence, Italy; 3 Department of Civil Engineering, University of Pisa, Italy Abstract: A case study in Albania is presented based on the EU Phare Land Use Policy II project results where GIS-oriented instruments and innovative methodologies were implemented to support decision making for land-use policy and planning. The developed Land-Use Information System for Albania allows the logical and functional hierarchical arrangement of land uses and data harmonisation with other land-use description systems. It is linked to the object-oriented Land-Use Change Analyses methodology that groups changes into conversions and modifications. The preferred change patterns indicate that land users take rational decisions when changing land use, even in the absence of any regulating plan, as is the case in post-communist Albania. Key words: Land-use change dynamics; knowledge discovery in databases; object-oriented database approach; agriculture; urbanisation. 1. INTRODUCTION In Albania, the Government has distributed land to rural households instead of restitution of most of the fertile land to a small number of families that would have restored the highly unequal, pre-reform land distribution (Swinnen, 1999; 2000). The transition from 550 large agricultural cooperatives to 467,000 smallholder farms was associated with the fragmentation of land into 1.5 million parcels that often have limited or no access to infrastructure and mechanisation. Most of the agricultural land lies E. Koomen et al. (eds.), Modelling Land-Use Change, 25–44. © 2007 Springer
- 45. 26 in sloping areas with soils having high erosion risk potentials. Most of the farms are subsistence ones and about 75% of farm production is for home consumption. The lack of information, inadequate extension services, almost no access to bank credit, lack of marketing channels and difficult access to transport are the major constraints for the Albanian farmer. Since around half of the Albanian population is employed in the agricultural sector, a national development priority is a sound land-use policy, allocating land to uses that prevent degradation and yield high long-term returns. The land users should ensure the long-term quality of land for human use, minimise social conflicts and protect ecosystems. All user categories should have enough land with an infrastructure balanced against environmental threats, at reasonable cost and having a well-defined tenure. The EU Phare Land Use Policy (LUP) II project provided GIS-oriented instruments and innovative methodologies to support decision making for land-use policy and planning to the Ministry of Agriculture and Food in Albania. These methodologies and tools have been applied in three representative pilot communes in the northwest, centre and southeast of the country. This chapter illustrates the concepts adopted and results obtained for the analysis of land-use change dynamics over the period 1991-2003. Land-use change is one of the main driving forces of (global) environmental change and therefore central to sustainable development (Meyer and Turner, 1994; Walker et al., 1997; Walker, 1998). Thus, analysis of past land uses and understanding processes and preferred pathways of change will support informed decision making for improved, sustainable and environmentally sound land uses in future. 2. METHODOLOGY This section gives a short description of the information system and its basic unit that were used in this study and briefly introduces the methods that were used in the analysis of the land-use changes. The methodology is described more extensively in two LUP II project documents (Agrotec S.p.A. Consortium, 2003a; 2003b). 2.1 The cadastral land parcel as a basic unit For each piece of land, individuals choose a type of use from which they expect to derive the most benefits in the context of their knowledge, the individual’s household, the community, the bio-physical environment and the political structure to which the individual may be subject. These choices vary in space and time resulting in a spatial pattern of land uses. The L.J.M. Jansen, G. Carrai and M. Petri
- 46. 2. Land-use change at cadastral parcel level in Albania 27 analysis at the level of the spatially explicit legal parcel unit of the multi- purpose cadastre may show the variability at the level of each cadastral zone while the aggregated level of the commune may show patterns that remain invisible at the detailed scale, and vice versa (Veldkamp et al., 2001). The aggregated level of the commune is important in the land-use policy and planning process while the cadastral parcel unit is a level that corresponds with the decisions made by the individual landowner or land user. It should be clear though, that such decisions may be related to the size of the group that the individual belongs to (Verburg et al., 2003). Individuals interact to form groups and organise collective action (e.g. farmer associations). In general, land registration and the cadastre should be seen as part of the process of natural resources planning and management. The multi-purpose cadastre should therefore be seen as an integral part of the land management system. It is therefore important to establish linkages with a wider range of land-related data, especially those relating to the environment. In this manner, managing land and land information come together (Dale, 1995). 2.2 The Land-Use Information System for Albania There is significant diversity of opinion about what constitutes a land use (UNEP/FAO, 1994). In the context of the project, land use is defined as “the type of human activity taking place at or near the surface” (Cihlar and Jansen, 2001). The developed Land-Use Information System for Albania (LUISA) has adopted, as guiding principles, two criteria that are commonly applied in international systems (Anderson et al., 1976; IGU, 1976; ECE- UN, 1989; UN, 1989; 1998; CEC, 1993; 1995; 1999; FAO, 1998; APA, 1999): (1) function that refers to the economic purpose of the land use and can group many different land-use types in a single category; and (2) activity that refers to a process resulting in a similar type of product and is used at the lower levels of the hierarchy (Jansen and Di Gregorio, 1998; 2002). The adopted concept builds upon and exceeds experiences gained in two case studies (Jansen and Di Gregorio, 2003; 2004). Furthermore, LUISA arranges in a logical and functional manner land uses at different levels of detail and allows data harmonisation with other land-use description systems in use in the country (e.g. statistical office, cadastre and communes). Categories present in the current version of LUISA represent the key categories of the Albanian law on the land: ‘agricultural’, ‘forests’, ‘pastures and meadows’ and ‘non-agricultural’ land uses (Figure 2-1). The set of classes in this legend is only a proportion of what one may actually find in Albania. The cadastre in Albania contains information on 1.5 million parcel units with an average size of less than 1 ha. Because of the scale of observation selected, i.e. the cadastral parcel unit, and in order to create in a
- 47. 28 timely manner a pragmatic land-use database of manageable size (i.e. all records created will need to be maintained and updated at regular intervals), the decision was made that only one land-use class is attached to each parcel unit. At aggregated cadastral parcel levels, mixed classes can be introduced but they do not exist at the most detailed level of LUISA. The LUISA data, together with other data sets, have been structured according to the European Environmental Agency’s Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe initiative (INSPIRE Environmental Thematic Coordination Group, 2002). Figure 2-1. Overview of the LUISA legend with the four main categories of land use (Agrotec S.p.A. Consortium, 2003b). 2.3 The Land-Use Change Analyses methodology LUISA contains many classes and thus will result in numerous possible land-use changes that do not facilitate a meaningful interpretation if not grouped in a functional and systematic manner. The developed object- oriented Land-Use Change Analyses (LUCA) methodology arranges the potential land-use changes in three main groups per land-use category in order to underline the change processes: (1) land-use conversion, i.e. where a certain land use has been changed into a land use that is very different and L.J.M. Jansen, G. Carrai and M. Petri
- 48. 2. Land-use change at cadastral parcel level in Albania 29 the change cannot easily be reversed; (2) land-use modification, i.e. changes that are related to one another and where the situation can be reversed; and (3) no change, i.e. areas that have remained under the same land use. The parent-child relationships created facilitate the analysis of the spatio- temporal dimensions, i.e. area and perimeter over time (Booch, 1994). In principle, land-use modifications occur within a land-use category and land-use conversion occurs between land-use categories. The exception is the ‘non-agricultural’ land-use category that contains a larger variety of classes than the other categories; in this category modifications occur within one group (e.g. within ‘urban uses’) and conversions between groups (e.g. from ‘unproductive’ to ‘urban uses’). Unlikely changes such as a ‘residential area’ having changed into ‘arable land’ have been excluded from the change analysis. 2.4 Knowledge Discovery in Databases The Knowledge Discovery in Databases (KDD) process is an iterative procedure of selection, exploration and modelling of large amounts of data that was used to detect a priori unknown relationships in the data. The KDD process comprises many elements of which the two most important in the context of this chapter are (Bonchi and Pecori, 2003): 1. data-mining: the most important phase in which, through the use of specific algorithms, previously unknown patterns are extracted from the data that are channelled into a data model; and 2. pattern evaluation: an interpretation and evaluation of the identified patterns and data model in order to create new knowledge. Some preliminary statistics on correlations between parameters were performed using the On-Line Analytical Process (OLAP) cube for multi- dimensional analysis in order to better understand which parameters to use in the KDD process. OLAP was performed with the following variables: (1) land-use change class, (2) land-use change period, (3) slope class and (4) land suitability. The variables used as inputs into the decision tree that belongs to the data-mining phase of KDD have been used with the assumption that one of the variables, i.e. land use in 2003, is dependent on the other variables. The use of the variables to construct the decision tree is such that one starts at the initial node with all the available data; then at each step groups are created on the basis of an explanatory variable and in the successive step, each group created will be further subdivided by another explanatory variable and so on until the terminal node. Once a variable has been used, it cannot be used in successive steps (Lombardo et al., 2002). From the initial node to the terminal node, a series of decision rules can be extracted of the type
- 49. 30 level that measure the frequency and strength of the decision rule respectively. Decision rules that are valid for many cells have a major weight, whereas those that repeat themselves in the same manner have more significance. The method requires several runs in order to create groups that maximise the internal homogeneity and the external heterogeneity. To create the groups at each level of the procedure, a function is used as an efficiency index known as the ‘function segmentation criteria’ (Han and Kamber, 2000). 3. RESULTS 3.1 Pilot area selection The choice of pilot communes illustrates the diversity in landforms and (agro-)ecological conditions plus the variety in socioeconomic settings. The choice of Preza Commune was also governed by the fact that it already served as a pilot area in the LUP I project. The availability of suitable digital data sets was a prime criterion for selection. 3.2 The temporal changes in the communes Each of the three land-use data sets available represents a critical moment in time: (1) the 1991 data represent the land uses under the former centralised government; (2) the 1996 data represent the time when distribution and registration of the land to the family households took place; and (3) the 2003 data represent the actual land uses in the market-oriented economy. Table 2-1 shows the different types of land-use changes aggregated for the three communes, i.e. Preza, Ana-e-Malit and Pirg, in 1991-1996 and 1996-2003. The communes comprise 2552, 3357 and 2150 ha and are situated in the centre, northwest and southeast of the country respectively. In all three communes, the intensity of changes in 1991-1996, before the land distribution, is higher than in 1996-2003. The majority of parcels were not subject to any change in either period. In Ana-e-Malit and Pirg the area not subject to change increases in the second period, but in Preza it decreases. The main change in land use in both periods involves a land-use modification and in all three communes it is the ‘medium-level- modification-in-agriculture’, which means that classes in the ‘agricultural’ IF-THEN. Each decision rule is characterised by a weight and a confidence L.J.M. Jansen, G. Carrai and M. Petri
- 50. 2. Land-use change at cadastral parcel level in Albania 31 land-use category changed at level III, i.e. from permanent into temporary crop cultivation or vice versa. However, the extent of this modification is diminishing in 1996-2003 in Ana-e-Malit and Pirg, whereas Preza shows a clear increase. Land-use conversions are much less important in terms nonagriculture’, except in Preza in 1991-1996 where ‘pasture-to-agriculture’ conversion is dominant. The second most common conversion is ‘agriculture-to-pasture’ in Preza and Ana-e-Malit in both periods and in Pirg in 1996-2003. In Pirg, ‘nonagriculture-to-agriculture’ conversion is important in 1991-1996. It seems that in 1996-2003 in particular, agricultural lands were converted, whereas overall changes were affecting less parcels. In this period, land was privatized and apparently many new owners did not want or did not have the means to continue agricultural activities. Concerning the most important change, ‘medium-level-modification-in- agriculture’, more insight is gained when analysing what type of land-use classes result in this type of change. Selection of this change type in the three communes and grouping the class combinations of this change shows that in Preza and Ana-e-Malit in 1991-1996 the trend is to go from temporary to permanent crops, whereas in Pirg the trend in the same period is from permanent to temporary crops (Figure 2-2). In 1996-2003, the trend in Ana-e-Malit remains more or less the same. In Preza, however, the majority of changes still involve the change from temporary to permanent crops though the rate of change is at a lower level than in the previous period, while the change from permanent to temporary crops increases. In 1996-2003, the main trend in Pirg remains the change from permanent to temporary cropping but at a lower level than in the previous period and the change to permanent crops increases. In Pirg, many terraces with fruit trees, Table 2-1. Predominant types of land-use changes (claiming over 1% of the total area) in Preza, Ana-e-Malit and Pirg in 1991-1996 and 1996-2003 Preza Ana-e-Malit Pirg Type of land-use change 91-96 96-03 91-96 96-03 91-96 96-03 No change 86.5 80.2 71.7 90.2 81.3 91.9 Medium level modification in agriculture 4.9 7.6 9.8 1.9 8.2 3.9 High level modification in nonagriculture 1.8 1.5 Agriculture-to-forest 1.3 Agriculture-to-pasture 1.6 1.1 5.6 1.8 Agriculture-to-nonagricultural 1.1 2.5 2.1 1.4 Forest-to-pasture 1.1 2.9 Forest-to-agriculture 3.2 Pasture-to-agriculture 1.2 1.5 Nonagricultural-to-agriculture 2.5 use modifications. The most common conversion is ‘agriculture-to- of their extent but their impact may be bigger than that of land-
- 51. 32 the main crop production system, were destroyed in the 1990s; in Preza and Ana-e-Malit projects are underway to plant useful trees (e.g. fruit trees, olives). Figure 2-2. Detailed analysis of LUCA change type ‘medium-level-modification-in- agriculture’. The identified change dynamics have some important repercussions: the permanent cultivation land-use types are usually found on man-made terraces or in landscapes with slopes where the trees stabilise and protect the environment. Further analysis combining the land-use change data with a digital terrain model shows that one of the adverse affects of the change from permanent to temporary crops is increased erosion in hilly areas. Furthermore, there seems to be a shift in agricultural land uses because the area lost in one place and gained in another affects different parts of the commune territory. From the three-dimensional analysis of where such changes are found, it becomes clear that parts of the flat or almost flat areas favourable for agriculture are lost, whereas areas where less or even unfavourable terrain conditions (e.g. steep slopes) exist are gained. This consumption of prime agricultural land, in plains and river valleys of peri- urban areas, blurs the distinction between cities and countryside (Lambin , 2003). 3.3 The spatial distribution of changes As physical and social characteristics of communities vary in space and time, so do land-use choices, resulting in a spatial pattern of land-use types (Cihlar and Jansen, 2001). If one shows the land-use changes not in the et al. L.J.M. Jansen, G. Carrai and M. Petri
- 52. 2. Land-use change at cadastral parcel level in Albania 33 format of statistics but as maps, one can easily identify in each commune areas that were more prone to land-use changes than others. Figure 2-3. Distribution of land-use changes in the commune of (A) Preza, (B) Ana-e-Malit and (C) Pirg, in 1991-2003 (communes are not shown at same scale). Figure 2-3 shows the distribution of changes over the territory of the communes ranked according to the environmental impact of the change and the fact that Albanian law protects agricultural land, forests and pastures from other uses. The changes with the strongest adverse environmental impact, occurring in protected lands are indicated at the bottom of the figure in the darkest colours. The changes in Preza seem to be divided clearly over the territory: most conversions are found in the western part that consists mainly of hills, whereas most modifications occur in the eastern part that consists of foothills and a plain (indicated by the channel system). In Ana-e- Malit, modifications occur mainly on the foothills and close to the main village of the commune where also the frequency of conversions is highest. In the flatter areas, indicated by the channel system, few changes occur. In Pirg, modifications occur in areas where the land parcels have been divided into many very small parcels close to the villages as shown in the two detailed windows. Also conversions occur in these areas but of a type that is considered to have a positive environmental impact. Large parcels are more (See also Plate 1 in the Colour Plate Section)
- 53. 34 often subject to conversions considered to have a negative impact than small land parcels. Also in this commune, the flat areas with channel systems are not subject to many changes. The areas where land-use conversions occurred that cannot be easily reversed are mainly in the sloping and hilly parts of the communes. In the plains, land-use modifications were dominant, whereas the residential areas grew at the cost of neighbouring land uses. 3.4 Preferred pathways of change in Preza Commune The change dynamics can be related to the landscape position of the cadastral parcel within the terrain and the land suitability for irrigated agriculture, as the communes are predominantly agricultural ones, as well as a set of variables related to what is found in or close to the land parcel. The area of Preza Commune that changed in 1991-1996 and/or 1996-2003 was examined more closely. A preliminary statistical analysis using OLAP showed that: • In 1991-1996, more stability concerning land uses existed with around 39% of the total area being classified as no land-use change or ‘medium- level-modification-in-agriculture’ changes homogeneously distributed within the area involving the various slope and land suitability classes. • • In 1996-2003, contrary to the changes in the previous period, a portion of steep sloping lands has been abandoned (20%); this is probably related to abandonment of terraced areas. • Moreover, in the same period, privatisation of agricultural lands led to encroachment of fields at the costs of forests. Conversion from forests into pastures and meadows is around 10%. • It is interesting to note that there is a strong relation between slope class and land-use class, i.e. steep lands are always related to land uses like forestry and pastures and meadows. The data for Preza Commune was used as input into the KDD process in order to identify which variables in the extracted decision rules are important and lead to specific pathways of change. The rules with major weights were chosen first, followed by those with high significance. The territory of Preza Commune was divided into cells of 50 by 50 metres to which a series of attributes are linked from the available data sets. The analysis aims at explaining which factors in or near the cells are important in a specific type of change in either period. In the same period, transformations are uniformly distributed between the different land-use classes and slope categories. Moreover, there are no major conversions of land use but only some medium-level- modifications. L.J.M. Jansen, G. Carrai and M. Petri
- 54. 2. Land-use change at cadastral parcel level in Albania 35 The analysis concerns in particular the ‘medium-level-modification-in- agriculture’ land-use change and focuses on areas that are either not cultivated or fallow, regrouped under uncultivated, as (temporary) abandonment of cultivated and especially terraced areas is a problem. For the two periods, a set of decision rules was extracted that describe the pathways of change. The complete set of rules for 1996-2003 is almost twice the number of the previous period (719 versus 366 rules), though there are less changes in that period. Two types of rules are extracted, i.e. transformation and inertial rules, with the description of their conditions (e.g. IF LU1 and [conditions 1, 2, ...] THEN LU2). Transformation rules describe a land-use change (LU1 ≠ LU2), whereas inertial rules describe a land use not subject to change (LU1 = LU2). The extracted rules show that in 1996-2003, the vicinity of the examined cell does not influence the land-use change dynamics in particular. In 1991-1996, one finds the opposite, i.e. the vicinity of the cell is very important for change dynamics. One should also note that in 1991-1996, the extracted rules are essentially inertial rules and transformation rules are few and related to only a few cells, whereas in 1996-2003, there are more transformation rules than inertial rules. Furthermore, the transformation rules for 1991-1996 contain one principal condition that leads to a certain land-use change. In 1996-2003, a principal condition accompanied by more than one set of sub-conditions leads to the same land-use change. So, the preferred pathways of change are much more complex in the second period. Tables 2-2 to 2-5 show those rules related to permanent cropping, temporary cropping and uncultivated areas. A change that becomes more evident is that remote areas with either permanent or temporary cropping, often on steeper terrain, and with a lack of infrastructure tend to become uncultivated. So, in these areas the agricultural intensity has decreased dramatically. Application of the set of decision rules for 1996-2003 to the original data of 1996 resulted in a predicted land use for 2003 with a correlation coefficient of 0.75 with the observed 2003 data. The difference between the average square root of classification (0.15) and average absolute error (0.04) is low, which means the absence of classification outliers. In addition, the accuracy of prediction for each land-use class is above 0.70 with the exceptions of services and industrial areas because the first class is barely present in 1996 and the second absent at that date. Low values for these two classes, however, do not imply that the extracted decision rules involving these classes are erroneous, but they do indicate that these rules are not easily tested and evaluated.
- 55. Exploring the Variety of Random Documents with Different Content
- 56. “Only my word and my promise, Mr. Felsburg,” pleaded Albritton. “You don't know me very well; but if you'll inquire round you'll find out I've got the name for being an honest man, even if I have had a power of hard luck these last few years. I ain't a drinking man, Mr. Felsburg, and I'm a hard worker. If there was somebody I knew better than I know you I'd go to him; but there ain't anybody. I'm right at the end of my rope—I ain't got anywhere to turn. “I'm confident, if you'll give me a little help, Mr. Felsburg, I can make out to get a new start. But if I'm put off my place now I'll lose the crop I've put in—lose all my time and my labour too. It looks like tobacco is going to fetch a better price this fall than it's fetched for three or four years back, and the young plants I've put in are coming up mighty promising. But I need money to carry me over until I can get my tobacco cured and marketed. Don't you see how it is with me, Mr. Felsburg? Just a little temporary accommodation from you and I'm certain—” “Business is business, Mr. Albritton,” said Mr. Felsburg, cutting in on him. “And all my life I have been a business man. Is it good business, I should like to ask you, that I should loan you yet more money when already you owe me money which you cannot pay? Huh, Mr. Albritton?” “Maybe it ain't good business; but, just as one human being to another—” “Oh! So now you put it that way? Well, suit yourself. We talk, then, as two human beings, eh? We make this a personal matter, eh? Good! That also is how I should prefer it should be. Listen to me for one little minute, Mr. Albritton. I am going to speak with you about a small matter which happened quite a long while ago. Do you perhaps re-member something which happened in the spring of the year eighteen hundred and sixty—the year before the war broke out?” “Why, yes,” said Albritton after a moment of puzzled thought. “That was the year my father died and left me the place; the same year that I got married too. I wasn't but just twenty-two years old
- 57. then. But I don't get your drift, Mr. Felsburg. What's the year eighteen-sixty got to do with you and me?” “I'm coming to that pretty soon,” said Mr. Felsburg. He sat up straight now, his eyes ashine and his hands clenched on the arms of his chair. “Do you perhaps remember something else which also happened in that year, Mr. Albritton?” “I can't say as I do,” confessed the puzzled countryman. “Then, if you'll be so good as to listen, Mr. Albritton, I should be pleased to tell you. Maybe I have got a better memory than what your memory is. Also, maybe I have got something on me to remember it by. Now you listen to me! “There was a hot day in the springtime of that year, when you sat on the porch of your house out there in the country, and a little young Jew-boy pedlar came up your lane from the road, with a pack on his back; and he opened the gate of your horse lot, in the front of your house, and he came through that gate. “And you was sitting there on your porch, just like I am telling you; and you yelled to him that he should get out—that you did not want to buy nothing from him. Well, maybe he was new in this country and could not understand all what you meant. Or maybe it was that he was very tired and hot, and that he only wanted to ask you to let him sit down and take his heavy pack off his back, and drink some cool water out of your well, and maybe rest a little while there. And maybe, too, he had not sold anything at all that day and hoped that if he showed you what he had you would perhaps change your mind and buy something from him—just a little something, so that his whole day would not be wasted. “So he came through that gate of your horse lot and he kept on coming. And then you cursed at him, and you told him again he should get out. But he kept coming. And then you called your dogs. And two dogs came—big, mean dogs—out from under your house. “And when he saw the dogs come from under the house, that young Jew boy he turned round and he tried to run away and save himself. But the pack on his back was heavy, and he was already so
- 58. very tired, like I am telling you, from walking in the sun all day. And so he could not run fast. And the dogs they soon caught him, and they bit him many times in the legs; and then he was more worse scared than before and the biting hurt him very much, and he cried out. “But you stood there on your porch; and you clapped your two hands together and you laughed to hear that poor little pedlar boy cry out. And your dogs chased him away down the lane, and they bit him still more in his legs. Maybe perhaps you thought a poor Jew would not have feelings the same as you? Maybe perhaps you thought he would not bleed when those sharp teeth bit him in his legs? So you clapped your hands and you laughed to see him run and to hear him yell out that way. Do you remember all that, Mr. Albritton?” He stood up now, shaking all over; and his eyes glittered to match the diamond on his quivering hand. They glittered like two little hard bright stones. Under the tan the face of the man at whom he glared turned a dull brick-dust red. Albritton put up a hand to one burning cheek; and as he made answer the words came from him haltingly, self- accusingly: “I don't remember it, Mr. Felsburg; but if you say it's true—why, I reckin it must 'a' happened just the way you tell it. It was a low- down, cruel, mean thing to do; and if it was me I'm sorry for it— even now, after all these years. I wasn't much more than a boy, though; and—” “You were a grown man, Mr. Albritton; anyhow, you were older than the little pedlar boy that your dogs bit. You say you are sorry now; but you forgot about it, didn't you? “I didn't forget about it, Mr. Albritton! All these years I have not forgotten it. All these years I have been waiting for this day to make you sorry. All these years I have been waiting for this day to get even with you. I was that little Jew boy, Mr. Albritton. In my legs I have now the red marks from your dogs' teeth. And so now you
- 59. come here and you stand here before me”—he raised his chubby clenched fists and shook them—“and you—you—you—ask me that I should do you favours!” “Mr. Felsburg,” said Albritton—and his figure drooped as though he would prostrate himself before the triumphant little man—“I ain't saying this because I hope to get any help from you in a money way —I know there's no chance of that now—I'm saying it because I mean it from the bottom of my soul. I'm sorry. If I thought you'd believe me I'd be willing to go down on my knees and take my Bible oath that I'm sorry.” “You should save yourself the trouble, Mr. Albritton,” said Mr. Felsburg, calmer now. “In the part of your Bible which I believe in it says 'An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth,' Mr. Albritton.” “All right!” said Albritton. “You've had your say—you're even with me.” He turned from the gloating figure of the other and started to go. From the chair in which he had reseated himself, Felsburg, a pic-ture of vengeance gratified and sated, watched him, saying nothing until the bankrupt had descended the first step of the stairs and the second. Then he spoke. “You wait!” he ordered in the tone of a master. “I am not yet done.” “What's the use?” said Albritton; but he faced about, humbled and crushed. “There ain't anything you could say or do that would make me feel any worse.” “Come back!” bade Felsburg; and, like a man whipped, the other came back to the doorway. “You're even with me, I tell you,” he said from the threshold. “What's the use of piling it on?” Mr. Felsburg did not answer in words. He reached behind him to his desk, wadded up something in his fingers, and, once more rising, he advanced, with his figure distended, on Albritton. Albritton flinched, then straightened himself.
- 60. “Hit me if you want to,” he said brokenly. “I won't hit back if you do. I deserve it.” “Yes, I will hit you,” said Felsburg. “With this I will hit you.” Into Albritton's right hand he thrust a crumpled slip of paper. At the wadded paper Albritton stared numbly. “I don't know what you are driving at,” he said; “but, if this is a notice of foreclosure, I don't need any notice.” “Look at it—close,” bade Felsburg. And Albritton, obeying, looked; and his face turned from red to white and then to red again. “Now you see what it is,” said Felsburg. “It is my check for four hundred dollars. I loan it to you—without security; and to-day I fix up those mortgages for you. Mr. Albritton, I am even with you. All the days from now on that you live in your house I am getting even with you—more and more every day what passes. And now, please, go away.” He turned from the other, ignoring the fumbling hand that would have taken his own in its grasp; and, resting his elbows on his desk, he put his face in his cupped palms and spoke from between his fingers: “I ask you again—please go away!” When Judge Priest had finished telling me the story, in form much as I have retold it here, he sat back, drawing hard on his pipe, which had gone out. Bewildered, I pondered the climax of the tale. “But if Mr. Felsburg really wanted to get even,” I said at length, “what made him give that man the money?” The Judge scratched a match on a linen-clad flank and applied the flame to the pipe-bowl; and then, between puffs, made answer slowly. “Son,” he said, “you jest think it over in your spare time. I reckin mebbe when you're a little older the answer'll come to you.” And sure enough, when I was a little older it did.
- 63. T CHAPTER IV. THE GARB OF MEN HEY used to say—and how long ago it seems since they used to say it!—that the world would never see another world war. They said that the planet, being more or less highly civilised with regard to its principal geographical divisions, and in the main peaceably inclined, would never again send forth armed millions to slit the throats of yet other armed millions. That was what they said back yonder in 1912 and 1913, and in the early part of 1914 even. But something happened—something unforeseen and unexpected and unplausible happened. And, at that, the structure of amity between the nations which so carefully had been built up on treaty and pledge, so shrewdly tongued-and-grooved by the promises of Christian statesmen, so beautifully puttied up by the prayers of Christian men, so excellently dovetailed and mortised and rabbeted together, all at once broke down, span by span; just as it is claimed that a fiddler who stations himself in the middle of a bridge and plays upon his fiddle a certain note may, if only he keeps up his playing long enough, play down that bridge, however strong and well-piered it is. We still regard the fiddle theory as a fable concocted upon a hypothesis of physics; but when that other thing happened—a thing utterly inconceivable—we so quickly adjusted ourselves to it that at once yesterday's impossibility became to-day's actuality and to-mor- row's certain prospect. This war having begun, they said it could not at the very most last more than a few months; that the countries immediately concerned could not, any of them, for very long withstand the drains upon them in men and money and munitions and misery; that the people at home would rise in revolt against the stupid malignity of it, if the men at the front did not.
- 64. Only a few war-seasoned elderly men, including one in a War Office at London and one in a General Staff at Berlin and one in a Cabinet Chamber at Paris, warned their respective people to prepare themselves for a struggle bloodier, and more violent and costlier, and possibly more prolonged, than any war within the memories of living men. At first we couldn't believe that either; none of us could believe it. But those old men were right and the rest of us were wrong. The words of the war wiseacres came true. Presently we beheld enacted the intolerable situation they had predicted; and in our own country at least the tallies of dead, as enumerated in the foreign dispatches, began to mean to us only headlines on the second page of the morning paper. Then they said that when, by slaughter and maiming and incredible exertion, the manhood of Europe had been decimated to a given point the actual physical exhaustion of the combatants would force all the armies to a standstill. But the thing went on. It went on through its first year and through its second year. We saw it going on into its third year, with no sign of abatement, no evidence of a weakening anywhere among the states and the peoples immediately affected. We saw our own country drawn into it. And so, figuring what might lie in front of us and them by what laid behind, we might, without violence to credibility, figure it as going on until all of Britain's able-bodied adult male population wore khaki or had been buried in it; until sundry millions of the men of France were corpses or on crutches; until Germania had scraped and harrowed and combed her domains for cannon fodder; until Russia's countless supply of prime human grist for the red hopper of this red mill no longer was countless but countable. There is a town in the northern part of the Republic of France called Courney. Rather, I should say that once upon a time there was such a town. Considered as a town, bearing the outward manifestations of a town and nourishing within it the communal spirit of a town, it ceased to exist quite a time back. Nevertheless, it
- 65. is with that town, or with the recent site of it, that this story purports to deal. There is no particular need of our trying to recreate the picture of it as it was before the war began. Before the war it was one of a vast number of suchlike drowsy, cosy little towns lying, each one of them, in the midst of tilled fat acres on the breasts of a pleasant land; a town with the grey highroad running through it to form its main street, and with farms and orchards and vineyards and garden patches round about it; so that in the springtime, when the orchard trees bloomed and the grapevines put forth their young leaves and the wind blew, it became a little island, set in the centre of a little, billowy green-and-white sea; a town of snug small houses of red brick and grey brick, with a priest and a mayor, a schoolhouse and a beet-sugar factory, a town well for the gossips and a town shrine for the devout. Nor is there any especial necessity for us to try to describe it as it was after the war had rolled forward and back and forward again over it; for then it was transformed as most of those small towns that lay in the tracks of the hostile armies were transformed. It became a ruin, a most utter and complete and squalid ruin, filled with sights that were affronts to the eye and smells that were abominations to the nose. In this place there abode, at the time of which I aim to write, a few living creatures. They were human beings, but they had ceased to exist after the ordinary fashion of human beings in this twentieth century of ours. So often, in the first months and the first years of the war, had their simple but ample standards been forcibly upset that by now almost they had forgotten such standards had ever been. To them yesterday was a dimming memory, and to-morrow a dismal prospect without hope in it of anything better. To-day was all and everything to them; each day was destiny itself. Just to get through it with breath of life in one's body and rags over one's hide and a shelter above one's head—that was the first and the last of their aim. They lived not because life was worth while any more, but
- 66. because to keep on living is an instinct, and because most human beings are so blessed—or, maybe, so cursed—with a certain adaptability of temperament, a certain inherent knack of adjustability that they may endure anything—even the unendurable—if only they have ceased to think about the past and to fret about the future. And these people in this town had ceased to think. They were out of habit with thinking. A long time before, their sensibilities had been rocked to sleep by the everlasting lullaby of the cannon; their imaginations were wrapped in a smoky coma. They lived on without conscious effort, without conscious ambition, almost without conscious desire: just as blind worms live under a bank, or slugs in a marsh, or protoplasms in a pond. Once, twice, three times Courney had been a stepping-stone in the swept and garnished pathways of battle. Back in September of 1914 the Germans, sweeping southward as an irresistible force, took possession of this town, after shelling it quite flat with their big guns to drive out the defending garrison of French and British. Then, a little later, in front of Paris the irresistible force met the immovable body and answered the old, old question of the scientists; and, as the Germans fell back to dig themselves in along the Somme and the Aisne, there was again desperate hard fighting here, and many, very many, lives were spent in the effort of one side to take and retain, and of the other to gain and hold fast, the little peaky heaps of wreckage protruding above the stumps of the wasted orchard trees. Now, though, for a long time things had been quiet in Courney. Though placed in debatable territory, as the campaign experts regard debatable territory, it had lapsed into an eddy and a backwater of war, becoming, so to speak, a void and a vacuum amid the twisting currents of the war. In the core of a tornado there may be calm while about it the vortex swirls and twists. If this frequently is true of windstorms it occasionally is true of wars. Often to the right of them and to the left of them, sometimes far in front of them, and once in a while far back in the rear of them, those who still abode at Courney heard the distant voices of the big guns; but their place of habitation, by reasons of shifts in the war
- 67. game, was no longer on a route of communication between separate groups of the same fighting force. It was not even on a line of travel. No news of the world beyond their limited horizon seeped in to them. They did not know how went the war—who won or who lost—and almost they had quit desiring to know. What does one colony of blind worms in a bank care how fares it with colonies of blind worms in other banks? You think this state of apathy could not come to pass? Well, I know that it can, because with my own eyes I saw it coming to pass in the times while yet the war was new; while it yet was a shock and an affront to our beliefs; and you must remember that now I write of a much later time, when the world war had become the world's custom. Also, could you have looked in upon the surviving remnant of the inhabitants of Courney, you would have had a clearer and fuller corroboration of the fact I state, because then you would have seen that here in this place lived only those who were too old or too feeble to care, or else were too young to understand. All tallied, there were not more then than twenty remaining of two or three hundred who once had been counted as the people of this inconsequential village; and of these but two were individuals in what ordinarily would be called the prime of life. One of these two was a French petty officer, whose eyes had been shot out, and who, having been left behind in the first retreat toward Paris, had been forgotten, and had stayed behind ever since. The other had likewise been a soldier. He was a Breton peasant. His disability seemed slight enough when he sustained it. A bullet bored across the small of his back, missing the spine. But the bullet bore with it minute fragments of his uniform coat; and so laden with filth had his outer garments become, after weeks and months of service in the field, that, with the fragments of cloth, germs of tetanus had been carried into his flesh also, and lockjaw had followed. Being as strong as a bullock, he had weathered the hideous agonies of his disease; but it left him beset with an affliction like a
- 68. queer sort of palsy, which affected his limbs, his tongue, and the nerves and muscles of his face. Continually he twitched all over. He moved by a series of spasmodic jerks, and when he sought to speak the sounds he uttered came out from his contorted throat in slobbery, unintelligible gasps and grunts. He was sane enough, but he had the look about him of being an idiot. Besides these two there were three or four very aged, very infirm men on the edge of their dotage; likewise some women, including one masterful, high-tempered old woman and a younger woman who wept continuously, with a monotonous mewing sound, for a husband who was dead in battle and for a fourteen-year-old son who had vanished altogether out of her life, and who, for all she knew, was dead too. The rest were children—young children, and a baby or so. There were no sizable youths whatsoever, and no girls verging on maidenhood, remaining in this place. So this small group was what was left of Courney. Their houses being gone and family ties for the most part wiped out, they consorted together in a rude communal system which a common misery had forced upon them. Theirs was the primitive socialism that the cave dweller may have known in his tribe. As I say, their houses were gone; so they denned in holes where the cellars under the houses had been. Time had been when they fled to the shelter of these holes as the fighting, swinging northward or southward, included Courney in its orbit. Afterward they had contrived patchwork roofage to keep out the worst of the weather; and now they called these underground shelters home, which was an insult to the word home. Once they had had horse meat to eat—the flesh of killed cavalry mounts and wagon teams. Now perforce they were vegetarians, living upon cabbages and beets and potatoes which grew half wild in the old garden patches, and on a coarse bran bread made of a flour ground by hand out of the grain that sprouted in fields where real harvests formerly had grown.
- 69. The more robust and capable among the adults cultivated these poor crops in a pecking and puny sort of way. The children went clothed in ancient rags, which partly covered their undeveloped and stunted bodies, and played in the rubbish; and sometimes in their play they delved too deep and uncovered grisly and horrible objects. On sunny days the blind soldier and the palsied one sat in the sunshine, and when it rained they took refuge with the others in whichever of the leaky burrows was handiest for them to reach. If they walked the Breton towed his mate in a crippling, zigzag course, for one lacked the eyes to see where he went and the other lacked the ability to steer his afflicted legs on a direct line. The wreckage of rafters and beams and house furnishings provided abundant supplies of wood and for fires. By a kind of general assent, headship and authority were vested jointly in the old tempestuous woman and the blind man, for the reasons that she had the strongest body and the most resolute will, and he the keenest mind of them all. So these people lived along, without a priest to give them comfort by his preaching; without a physician to mend their ailments; with no set code of laws to be administered and none to administer them. Existence for them was reduced to its raw elementals. Since frequently they heard the big guns sounding distantly and faintly, they knew that the war still went on. And, if they gave the matter a thought, to them it seemed that the war always would go on. Time and the passage of time meant little. A day was merely a period of lightness marked at one end by a sunrise and at the other by a sunset; and when that was over and darkness had come, they bedded themselves down under fouled and ragged coverlids and slept the dumb, dreamless sleep of the lower animals. Except for the weeping woman who went about with her red eyes continually streaming and her whining wail forever sounding, no one among them seemingly gave thought to those of their own kinspeople and friends who were dead or scattered or missing. Well, late one afternoon in the early fall of the year, the workers had quit their tasks and were gathering in toward a common centre,
- 70. before the oncoming of dusk, when they heard cries and beheld the crotchety old woman who shared leadership with the blinded man, running toward them. She had been gathering beets in one of the patches to the southward of their ruins; and now, as she came at top speed along the path that marked where their main street had once been, threading her way swiftly in and out among the grey mounds of rubbish, she held a burden of the red roots in her long bony arms. She lumbered up, out of breath, to tell them she had seen soldiers approaching from the south. Since it was from that direction they came, these soldiers doubtlessly would be French soldiers; and, that being so, the dwellers in Courney need feel no fear of mistreatment at their hands. Nevertheless, always before, the coming of soldiers had meant fighting; so, without waiting to spy out their number or to gauge from their movements a hint of their possible intentions, she had hastened to spread the alarm. “I saw them quite plainly!” she cried out between pants for breath. “They have marched out of the woods yonder—the woods that bound the fields below where the highroad to Laon ran in the old days. And now they are spreading out across the field, to the right and the left. Infantry they are, I think—and they have a machine gun with them.” “How many, grandmother? How many of them are there?” It was the eyeless man who asked the question. He had straightened up from where he sat, and stood erect, with his arms groping before him and his nostrils dilated. “No great number,” answered the old woman; “perhaps two companies—perhaps a battalion. And as they came nearer to me they looked—they looked so queer!” “How? How? What do you mean by queer?” It was the blind man seeking to know. She dropped her burden of beetroots and threw out her hands in a gesture of helplessness.
- 71. “Queer!” she repeated stupidly. “Their clothes now—their clothes seemed not to fit them. They are such queer-looking soldiers—for Frenchmen.” “Oh, if only the good God would give me back my eyes for one little hour!” cried the blind man impotently. Then, in a different voice, “What is that?” he said, and swung about, facing north. His ears, keener than theirs, as a blind man's ears are apt to be, had caught, above the babble of their excited voices, another sound. Scuttling, shuffling, half falling, the palsied man, moving at the best speed of which he was capable, rounded a heap of shattered grey masonry that had once been the village church, and made toward the clustered group of them. His jaws worked spasmodically. With one fluttering hand he pointed, over his left shoulder, behind him. He strove to speak words, but from his throat issued only clicking, slobbery grunts and gasps. “What is it now?” demanded the old woman. She clutched him, forcing him to a quaking standstill. He kept on gurgling and kept on pointing. “Soldiers? Are there more soldiers coming?” He nodded eagerly. “From the north?” He made signs of assent. “Frenchmen?” He shook his head until it seemed he would shake it off his shoulders. “Germans, then? From that way the Germans are coming, eh?” Again he nodded, making queer movements with his hands, the meaning of which they could not interpret. Indeed, none there waited to try. With one accord they started for the deepest and securest of their burrows—the one beneath the battered-down sugar-beet factory. Its fallen walls and its shattered roof made a lid, tons heavy and yards thick, above the cellar of it. In times of fighting it had been their safest refuge. So once more they ran to hide
- 72. themselves there. The ragged children scurried on ahead like a flight of autumn leaves. The very old men and the women followed after the children; and behind all the rest, like a rearguard, went the cripple and the old woman, steering the blind man between them. At the gullet of a little tunnel-like opening leading down to the deep basement below, these three halted a brief moment; and the palsied man and the woman, looking backward, were in time to see a skirmisher in the uniform of a French foot soldier cross a narrow vista in the ruins, perhaps a hundred yards away, and vanish behind a culm of broken masonry. Seen at that distance, he seemed short, squatty—almost gnomish. Back in the rear of him somewhere a bugle sounded a halting, uncertain blast, which trailed off suddenly to nothing, as though the bugler might be out of breath; and then— pow, pow, pow!—the first shots sounded. High overhead a misdirected bullet whistled with a droning, querulous note. The three tarried no longer, but slid down into the mouth of the tunnel. Inside the cellar the women and children already were stretched close up to the thick stone sides, looking like flattened piles of rags against the flagged floor. They had taken due care, all of them, to drop down out of line with two small openings which once had been windows in the south wall of the factory cellar, and which now, with their sashes gone, were like square portholes, set at the level of the earth. Through these openings came most of the air and all of the daylight which reached their subterranean retreat. The old woman cowered down in an angle of the wall, rocking back and forth and hugging her two bony knees with her two bony arms; but the maimed soldiers, as befitting men who had once been soldiers, took stations just beneath the window holes, the one to listen and the other to watch for what might befall in the narrow compass of space lying immediately in front of them. For a moment after they found their places there was silence there in the cellar, save for the rustling of bodies and the wheeze of forced breathing. Then a woman's voice was uplifted wailingly: “Oh, this war! Why should it come back here again? Why couldn't it leave us poor ones alone?”
- 73. “Hush, you!” snapped the blinded man in a voice of authority. “There are men out there fighting for France. Hush and listen!” A ragged volley, sounding as though it had been fired almost over their heads, cut off her lamentation, and she hid her face in her hands, bending her body forward to cover and shield a baby that was between her knees upon the floor. From a distance, toward the north, the firing was answered. Somewhere close at hand a rapid-fire gun began a staccato outburst as the gun crew pumped its belts of cartridges into its barrel; but at once this chattering note became interrupted, and then it slackened, and then it stopped altogether. “Idiots! Fools! Imbeciles!” snarled the blind man. “They have jammed the magazine! And listen, comrade, listen to the rifle fire from over here—half a company firing, then the other half. Veterans would never fire so. Raw recruits with green officers—that's what they must be.... And listen! The Germans are no better.” Outside, nearby, a high-pitched strained voice gave an order, and past the window openings soldiers began to pass, some shrilly cheering, some singing the song of France, the Marseillaise Hymn. Their trunks were not visible. From the cellar could be seen only their legs from the knees down, with stained leather leggings on each pair of shanks, and their feet, in heavy military boots, sliding and slithering over the cinders and the shards of broken tiling alongside the wrecked factory wall. Peering upward, trying vainly at his angled range of vision to see the bodies of those who passed, the palsied man reached out and grasped the arm of his mate in a hard grip, uttering meaningless sounds. It was as though he sought to tell of some astounding discovery he had just made. “Yes, yes, brother; I understand,” said the blind man. “I cannot see, but I can hear. There is no swing to their step, eh? Their feet scuffle inside their boots, eh? Yes, yes, I know—they are very weary. They have come far to-day to fight these Huns. And how feebly they sing the song as they go past us here! They must be very tired—that
- 74. is it, eh? But, tired or not, they are Frenchmen, and they can fight. Oh, if only the good God for one little hour, for one little minute, would give me back my eyes, to see the men of France fighting for France!” The last straggling pair of legs went shambling awkwardly past the portholes. To the Breton, watching, it appeared that the owner of those legs scarcely could lift the weight of the thick-soled boots. Beyond the cellar, to the left, whither the marchers had defiled, the firing became general. It rose in volume, sank to a broken and individual sequence of crashes, rose again in a chorus, grew thin and thready again. There was nothing workmanlike, nothing soldierlike about it; nothing steadfastly sustained. It was intermittent, irregular, uncertain. Listening, the blind man waggled his head in a puzzled, irritated fashion, and shook off the grasp of his comrade, who still appeared bent on trying to make something clear to him. With a movement like that of a startled horse the old leader- woman threw up her head. With her fingers she clawed the matted grey hair out of her ears. “Hark! Hark!” she cried, imposing silence upon all of them by her hoarse intensity. “Hark, all of you! What is that?” The others heard it too, then. It was a whining, gagging, thin cry from outside, dose up against the southerly wall of their underground refuge—the distressful cry of an un-happy child, very frightened and very sick. There was no mistaking it—the sobbing intake of the breath; the choked note of nausea which followed. “It is a little one!” bleated one woman. “What child is missing?” screeched another in a panic. “What babe has been overlooked?” Each mother took quick and frenzied inventory of her own young, groping out with her hands to make sure by the touch of their flesh to her flesh that her offspring were safely bestowed. But when, this done, they turned to tell their leader that apparently all of Courney had been accounted for, she was gone. She had darted into the dark
- 75. passage that led up and outward into the open. They sat up on their haunches, gaping. A minute passed and she was back, half bearing, half pulling in her arms not a forgotten baby, but a soldier; a dwarfish and misshapen soldier, it seemed to them, squatting there in the fading light; a soldier whose uniform was far too large for him; a soldier whose head was buried under his cap, and whose face was hidden within the gaping collar of his coat, and whose booted toes scraped along the rough flagging as his rescuer backed in among them, dragging him along with her. In the middle of the floor she released him, and he fell upon his side in a clump of soiled cloth and loose accoutrement; and for just an instant they thought both his hands had been shot away, for nothing showed below the ends of the flapping sleeves as he pressed his midriff in his folded arms, uttering weak, tearful cries. Then, though, they saw that his hands were merely lost within the length of his sleeves, and they plunged at the conclusion that his hurt was in his middle. “Ah, the poor one!” exclaimed one or two. “Wounded in the belly.” “Wounded?” howled the old woman. “Wounded? You fools! Don't you see he has no wound? Don't you see what it is? Then, look, you fools—look!” She dropped down alongside him and wrestled him, he struggling feebly, over on his back. With a ferocious violence she snatched the cap off his head, tore his gripped arms apart, ripped open the coat he wore and the coarse shirt that was beneath it. “Look, fools, and see for yourselves!” Forgetting the danger to themselves of stray bullets, they scrambled to their feet and crowded up close behind her, peering over her shoulders as she reared back upon her bent knees in order that they might the better see. They did see. They saw, looking up at them from beneath the mop of tousled black hair, the scared white face and the terror- widened eyes of a boy—a little, sickly, undernourished boy. He could
- 76. not have been more than fourteen—perhaps not more than thirteen. They saw in the gap of his parted garments the narrow structure of his shape, with the ribs pressing tight against the tender, hairless skin, and below the arch of the ribs the sunken curve of his abdomen, heaving convulsively to the constant retching as he twisted and wriggled his meagre body back and forth. “Oh, Mother above!” one yowled. “They have sent a child to fight!” As though these words had been to him a command, the writhing heap half rose from the flags. “I am no child!” he cried, between choking attacks of nausea. “I am as old as the rest—older than some. Let me go! Let me go back! I am a soldier of France!” For all his brave words, his trembling legs gave way under him, and he fell again and rolled over on his stomach, hiding his face in his hands, a whimpering, vomiting child, helpless with pain and with fear. “He speaks true! He speaks true!” yelled the old woman. Now she was on her feet, her lean face red and swollen with a vast rage. “I saw them—I saw them—I saw those others as I was dragging this one in. He speaks true, I tell you. There was a captain—he could not have been more than fifteen. And his sword—it was as long as he was, nearly. There are soldiers out there like this one, whose arms are not strong enough to lift the guns to their shoulders. They are children who fight outside—children in the garb of men!” The widow, who continually wept, sprang forward. She had quit weeping and a great and terrible fury looked out of her red-lidded eyes. She screeched in a voice that rose above the wails of the rest: “And it was for this, months ago, that they took away from me my little Pierre! Mother of God, they fight this war with babies!” She threw herself down on all fours and, wriggling across the floor upon her hands and knees, gathered up the muddied, booted feet of the boy soldier and hugged them to her bosom. In the middle of the circle the old woman stood, gouging at her hair with her hands.
- 77. “It is true!” she proclaimed. “They are sending forth our babies to fight against strong men.” The palsied man twisted himself up to her. He shook his head to and fro, as if in dissent of what she declared. He pointed toward the north; then at the sobbing boy at his feet; then north again; then at the boy; and, so doing, he many times and very swiftly nodded his head. Then he repeated the same gesticulations with his arms that he had made at the time of giving the first alarm of the approach of the enemy. Finally he stooped his back and shrank up his body and hunched in his shoulders in an effort to counterfeit smallness and slightness, all the while gurgling in a desperate attempt to make himself understood. All at once, simultaneously his audience grasped the purport of his pantomime. “The Germans that you saw, they were children too—children like this one?” demanded the old woman, her voice all thickened and raspy with her passion. “Is that what you mean?” He jerked his head up and down in violent assent, his jaws clicking and his face muscles jumping. The old woman shoved him away from in front of her. “Come on with me!” she bade the other women, in a tone that clarioned out high and shrill above the sobbing of the boy on the floor, above the gurgling of the cripple and the sound of the firing without. “Come on!” They knew what she meant; and behind her they massed themselves, their bodies bent forward from their waists, their heads lowered and their hands clenched like swimmers about to breast a swift torrent. “Bide where you are—you women!” the blinded man commanded. He felt his way out to the middle of the room, barring their path with his body and his outspread arms. “You can do nothing. The war goes on—this fight here goes on—until we win!” “No, no, no, no!” shouted back the old beldam, and at each word beat her two fists against her flaccid breasts. “When babies fight this war this war ends! And we—the women here—the women
- 78. everywhere—we will stop it! Do you hear me? We will stop it! Come on!” She pushed him aside; and, led by her, the tatterdemalion crew of them ran swiftly from the cellar and into the looming darkness of the tunnel, crying out as they ran. Strictly speaking, the beginning of this story comes at the end of it. One morning in the paper, I read, under small headlines on an inner page, sandwiched in between the account of a football game at Nashville and the story of a dog show at Newport, a short dispatch that had been sent by cable to this country, to be printed in our papers and to be read by our people, and then to be forgotten by them. And that dispatch ran like this: BOYS TO FIGHT WAR SOON Germany Using Some Seventeen Years Old. Haig Wants Young Men London—The war threatens soon to become a struggle between mere boys. The pace is said to be entirely too fast for the older men long to endure. It is declared here that by the middle of 1917, the Entente Allies will be facing boys of seventeen in the German Army. General Sir Douglas Haig, commanding the British Expeditionary Forces, is said to have objected to the sending out of men of middle age. He wants young men of from eighteen to twenty-five. After the latter year, it is said, the fighting value of the human unit shows a rapid and steady decline.... The older men have their place; but, generally speaking, it is said now to be in “the army behind the army”—the men back of the line, in the supply and transport divisions, where the strain is not so great. These older men are too susceptible to trench diseases to be of great use on the firing line. England already is registering boys born in 1899, preparatory to calling them up when they attain their eighteenth year. So I sat down and I wrote this story.
- 80. T CHAPTER V. THE CURE FOR LONESOMENESS HEY were on their way back from Father Minor's funeral. Going to the graveyard the horses had ambled slowly; coming home they trotted along briskly so that from under their feet the gravel grit sprang up, to blow out behind in little squills and pennons of yellow dust. The black plumes in the headstalls of the white span that drew the empty hearse nodded briskly. It was only their colour which kept those plumes from being downright cheerful. Also, en route to the cemetery, the pallbearers, both honorary and active, had marched in double file at the head of the procession. Now, returning, they rode in carriages especially provided for them. The first carriage—that is to say, the first one following the hearse —held four passengers: firstly, the widowed sister of the dead man, from up state somewhere; secondly and thirdly, two strange priests who had come over from Hopkinsburg to conduct the services; finally and fourthly, the late Father Minor's housekeeper, a lean and elderly spinster whose devoutness made her dour; indeed, a person whom piety beset almost as a physical affliction. Seeing her any time at all, the observer went away filled with the belief that in her particular case the more certain this woman might be of blessedness hereafter, the more miserable she would feel in the meantime. Now, as her grief-drawn face and reddened eyes looked forth from the carriage window upon the familiar panorama of Buckner Street, all about her bespoke the profound conviction that this world, already lost in sin, was doubly lost since Father Minor had gone to take his reward. In the second carriage rode four of the honorary pallbearers, and each of them was a veteran, as the dead priest had been: Circuit
- 81. Judge Priest, Sergeant Jimmy Bagby, Doctor Lake, and Mr. Peter J. Galloway, our leading blacksmith and horseshoer. Of these four Mr. Galloway was the only one who worshipped according to the faith the dead man had preached. But all of them were members in good standing of the Gideon K. Irons Camp. As though to match the changed gait of the undertaker's horses, the spirits of these old men were uplifted into a sort of tempered cheerfulness. So often it is that way after the mourners come away from the grave. All that kindly hands might do for him who was departed out of this life had been done. The spade had shaped up and smoothed down the clods which covered him; the flowers had been piled upon the sexton's mounded handiwork until the raw brown earth was almost hidden. Probably already the hot morning sun was wilting the blossoms. By to-morrow morning the petals would be falling—a drifting testimony to the mortality of all living things. On the way out these four had said mighty little to one another, but in their present mood they spoke freely of their departed comrade—his sayings, his looks, little ways that he had, stories of his early life before he took holy orders, when he rode hard and fought hard, and very possibly swore hard, as a trooper in Morgan's cavalry. “It was a fine grand big turnout they gave him this day,” said Mr. Galloway with a tincture of melancholy pride in his voice. “Almost as many Protestants as Catholics there.” “Herman Felsburg sent the biggest floral design there was,” said Doctor Lake. “I saw his name on the card.” “That's the way Father Tom would have liked it to be, I reckin,” said Judge Priest from his corner of the carriage. “After all, boys, the best test of a man ain't so much the amount of cash he's left in the bank, but how many'll turn out to pay him their respects when they put him away.” “Still, at that,” said the sergeant, “I taken notice of several absentees—from the Camp, I mean. I didn't see Jake Smedley
- 82. nowheres around at the church, or at the graveyard neither.” “Jake's got right porely,” explained Judge Priest. “He's been lookin' kind of ga'nted anyhow, lately. I'm feared Jake is beginnin' to break.” “Oh, I reckin tain't ez bad ez all that,” said the sergeant. “You'll see Jake comin' round all right ez soon ez the weather turns off cool ag'in. Us old boys may be gittin' along in years, but we're a purty husky crew yit. It's a powerful hard job to kill one of us off. I'm sixty- seven myself, but most of the time I feel ez peart and skittish ez a colt.” He spoke for the moment vaingloriously; then his tone altered: “I'm luckier, though, than some—in the matter of general health. Take Abner Tilghman now, for instance. Sence he had that second stroke Abner jest kin make out to crawl about. He wasn't there to- day with us neither.” “Boys,” said Doctor Lake, “I hope it's no reflection on my professional abilities, but it seems to me I've been losing a lot of my patients here recently. I'm afraid Ab Tilghman is going to be the next one to make a gap in the ranks. Just between us, he's in mighty bad shape. Did it ever occur to any of you to count up and see how many members of the Camp we've buried this past year, starting in last January with old Professor Reese and winding up to-day with Father Minor?” None of them answered him in words. Only Judge Priest gave a little stubborn shake of his head, as though to ward away an unpleasant thought. Tact inspired Sergeant Bagby to direct the conversation into a different channel. “I reckin Mrs. Herman Felsburg won't know whut to do now with that extry fish she always fries of a Friday,” said the sergeant. “That's right too, Jimmy,” said Mr. Galloway. “Well, God bless her anyway for a fine lady!” Had you, reader, enjoyed the advantage of living in our town and of knowing its customs, you would have understood at once what this last reference meant. You see, the Felsburgs, in their fine home, lived diagonally across the street from the little priest house behind the Catholic church. Mrs. Felsburg was distinguished for being a rigid
- 83. adherent to the ritualistic laws of her people. Away from home her husband and her sons might choose whatever fare suited their several palates, but beneath her roof and at the table where she presided they found none of the forbidden foods. On Fridays she cooked with her own hands the fish for the cold Shabbath supper and, having cooked them, she set them aside to cool. But always the finest, crispest fish of all, while still hot, was spread upon one of Mrs. Felsburg's best company plates and covered over with one of Mrs. Felsburg's fine white napkins, and then a servant would run across the street with it, from Mrs. Felsburg's side gate to the front door of the priest house, and hand it in to the dour-faced housekeeper with Mrs. Felsburg's compliments. And so that night, at his main meal of the day, Father Minor would dine on prime river perch or fresh lake crappie, fried in olive oil by an orthodox Jewess. Year in and year out this thing had happened once a week regularly. Probably it would not happen again. Father Minor's successor, whoever he might be, might not understand. Mr. Galloway nodded abstractedly, and for a little bit nothing was said. The carriage bearing them twisted out of the procession, leaving a gap in it, and stopped in front of Doctor Lake's red-brick residence. The old doctor climbed down stiffly and, leaning heavily on his cane, went up the walk to his house. Next Mr. Galloway was dropped at his shabby little house, snug in its ambuscade behind a bushwhacker's paradise of lilac bushes; and pretty soon after that it was Sergeant Bagby's turn to get out. As the carriage slowed up for the third stop Judge Priest laid a demurring hand upon his companion's arm. “Come on out to my place, this evenin', Jimmy,” he said, “and have a bite of supper with me. There won't be nobody there but jest you and me, and after supper we kin set a spell and talk over old times.” The sergeant shook his whity-grey head in regretful dissent. “I wish't I could, Judge,” he said, “but it can't be done—not to- night.”
- 84. “Better come on!” The judge's tone was pleading. “I sort of figger that there old nigger cook of mine has killed a young chicken. And she kin mix up a batch of waffle batter in less'n no time a-tall.” “Not to-night, Billy; some night soon I'll come, shore. But to-night my wife is figurin' on company, and ef I don't show up there'll be hell to pay and no pitch hot.” “Listen, Jimmy; listen to me.” The judge spoke fast, for the sergeant was out of the carriage by now. “I've got a quart of special licker that Lieutenant Governor Bosworth sent me frum Lexington. Thirty-two years old, Jimmy—handmade and run through a gum log. Copper nor iron ain't never teched it. And when you pour a dram of it out into a glass it beads up same ez ef it had soapsuds down in the bottom of it—it does fur a fact. There ain't been but two drinks drunk out of that quart.” “Judge, please quit teasin' me!” Like unto a peppercorn, ground between the millstones of duty and desire, the sergeant backed reluctantly away from between the carriage wheels. “You know yourse'f how wimmin folks are. It's the new Campbellite preacher that's comin' to-night, and there won't be a drop to drink on the table exceptin' maybe lemonade or ice tea. But I've jest natchelly got to be on hand and, whut's more, I've got to be on my best behaviour too. Dem that new preacher! Why couldn't he a-picked out some other night than this one?” “Jimmy, listen——” But the sergeant had turned and was fleeing to sanctuary, beyond reach of the tempter's tongue. So for the last eighth-mile of the ride, until the black driver halted his team at the Priest place out on Clay Street, the judge rode alone. Laboriously he crawled out from beneath the overhang of the carriage top, handed up two bits as a parting gift to the darky on the seat, and waddled across the sidewalk. The latch on the gate was broken. It had been broken for weeks. The old man slammed the gate to with a passionate jerk. The infirm latch clicked weakly, then slipped out of the iron nick and the gate
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