Utilising scenarios to facilitate multi-objective land use modelling for Broadland, UK, to 2100.

Landscapes that we see today will change in the future. Scenarios are used as a method for dealing with uncertainties in change and to provide plausible descriptions of our future world. A number of projects have utilised scenarios and a modelling-based approach to quantitatively investigate land use change at the national/regional-scale using a GIS. However, the coarse-scale of such land use data can render outputs inapplicable within local, often environmentally sensitive, landscapes. Improving data resolution allows us to investigate alternative potential futures at greater detail thereby providing vital input into policy and future decision-making. It may also facilitate localised studies of habitat fragmentation connectivity and visualisation. This paper utilises scenarios and regional-scale land use change data to facilitate a GIS-based model of land use change within a sensitive wetland environment. Land use change data from the RegIS project is localised to the study area in Broadland, UK. Areal totals, from the land use change data, are replicated within 0.01% of areal totals prescribed, enabling very spatially detailed land use maps to be developed. This work represents a locally explicit realisation of coarser regional-scale land use change data using an integrated GIS-Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (GIS-MCDA) methodology.