landis-ii

LANDIS-II is a forest landscape simulation model that simulates forest succession, disturbance (including fire, wind, harvesting, insects, climate change), and seed dispersal across large (typically 10,000 - 10,000,000 ha) landscapes. LANDIS-II tracks the age and spatial distribution of discrete tree and shrub species and has a flexible spatial and flexible temporal resolution.

LANDIS-II advances forest landscape simulation modeling in many respects. Most significantly, LANDIS-II, 1) has flexible time steps for every ecological process, 2) optionally allows for the incorporation of ecosystem processes and states (eg live biomass accumulation) 3) uses an advanced architecture that allows rapid model development and easy distribution and installation of model components.

LANDIS-II manages and executes discrete extensions (modules or plug-ins). Each ecological process is programmed as an independent extension that interacts with the landscape through an explicit interface with the core LANDIS-II program. The user specifies which extensions will be used to best simulate the forest dynamics of interest. LANDIS-II allows scientists to easily develop and share their own extensions.

LANDIS-II was developed at the Forest Landscape Ecology Laboratory at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the USFS Northern Research Station, and the Conservation Biology Institute.