The LANDIS-II Forest Landscape Model

News: LANDIS-II Core v6.0

We are currently working on the next version of the LANDIS-II Core - v6.0. We are including many enhancements that will make extension writing substantially easier for scientists as well as some modest restructuring to improve the architecture. In addition, LANDIS-II will be able to read and write many more raster file formats. As part of this effort, the LANDIS-II Spatial Modeling Library will become a separate open-source project (LSML). We expect the first release to be available in September or October 2010. Stay tuned!

LANDIS-II: Introduction

LANDIS-II simulates forest succession, disturbance (including fire, wind, harvesting, insects), climate change, and seed dispersal across large (typically 10,000 - 20,000,000 ha) landscapes. LANDIS-II tracks the spatial distribution of discrete tree and shrub species and has flexible spatial and temporal resolutions. Learn more about our research and see our publications list.

LANDIS-II advances forest 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 (e.g., live and dead biomass accrual, soil decomposition) 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 Portland State University.

For further information about LANDIS-II or to report web site problems, contact Dr. Robert Scheller (RMSCHELL @ pdx.edu).

LANDIS-II Web Site Overview

For a broad overview of LANDIS-II, see the LANDIS-II Introduction.

To register as a LANDIS-II user, visit the New User Page.

To download LANDIS-II, see the instructions on the Installation Page.

View the table of available extensions and check for updates at the Extensions Page.

To see or modify the list of active LANDIS-II projects, visit the Projects Page.

To see or modify the list of peer-reviewed papers, visit the Publications Page.

For further User Resources, visit the Users Page.

For Developer Resources, visit the Developers Page.

User Guides for the LANDIS-II core are found in the Documentation Page

User Guides and citations for individual extensions are linked to from the Extensions Page

Join the LANDIS-II Community!

• Registered Members have access to the model installer, extensions, and many additional user resources. To register, please follow the New user? link to the left. After registering, visit the install tab above. Registration is FREE.
• Registered Members also have access to the source code for the base and biomass extensions on the Developers web page. Instructions for developing and compiling extensions, a developers bulletin board, technical documentation are also available. For more information, visit the developers tab after you login.