Overview
ALCES III® is a spatially stratified simulation model that generates tabular and graphic projections for a wide range of environmental, economic, and social indicators under alternative assumptions about land use policies and ecological processes. A particular strength is that it reports on land, air, water and socio-economic indicators at the strategic level and can inform stakeholders on how land uses and natural disturbance regimes influence these indicators as an interacting system.
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ALCES® is designed to represent the impacts of alternative regional strategies on a range of indicators. The first-order impacts of such strategies in the model are on resource supply and land use. For example, altered zoning may affect the supply of petroleum and wood resources, and a land management strategy intended to reduce the industrial footprint may affect the management practices of one or more land uses. The capability of ALCES® to represent changes in land base composition caused by a large number of land uses and ecological processes is one of its key strengths. ALCES® is a spatially stratified model, which means that it tracks the area, length, and quantity of each footprint separately for each landscape type. ALCES® does not, however, track the explicit geographic location of these features (e.g., latitude and longitude). This feature greatly speeds up processing time relative to a spatially explicit modeling approach. The development of ALCES Mapper™ as a companion product has extended the capacity to represent ALCES® output on maps.
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ALCES® can be configured to represent changes in numerous landscape types and footprint types.
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Land base composition and resource production attributes are translated into indicator variables using coefficients, equations, and conversion factors. For example, statistical models of data obtained from the Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute have been developed to translate land base composition variables (e.g., area of each forest type, density of linear features) into indices of biodiversity and habitat quality.
