Research and Applications

Model Overview

Development

The Land Use Change Impact Assessment tool LUCIA has been developed at the Institute for Plant Production in the Tropics and Subtropics, University of Hohenheim, since 2008. The model was developed for the Special Research Program SFB 564 (The Uplands Program) funded by the German Research Foundation and is maintained and further developed in subproject C4.2 (until June 2012) and transfer project T6 (until June 2014).

Scope

LUCIA aims at assessing impacts of land use change in small mountainous catchments  on soil productivity and fertility, biomass production, watershed functions and environmental services. Emphasis is on matter flows in the landscape that connect upland and lowland areas.

Applications

The model can be used to assess effects of land use change and management on

• the soil water balance,
• run-off, erosion / deposition,
• nutrient budgets and crop production,
• CO₂ sequestration / release in / from plants and soil,
• litter inputs and organic matter turnover

As a spatially explicit landscape model, LUCIA includes routing of matter flows along topography-determined drainage directions.

As a research tool, LUCIA has been used in the Uplands Programm and applied in watersheds of Mae Sa, Chiang Mai province in North Thailand and Chieng Khoi, Son La province in Vietnam. For teaching, LUCIA has been applied at the University of Hohenheim, Chiang Mai University, Kyushu University. A course at Hanoi Agricultural University was held in Nov 2011.

Temporal resolution

Daily, with hourly sub-timestep for infiltration, runoff and erosion

Spatial resolution

User-defined pixel size

Software

LUCIA is written in PCRaster, a combination of dynamic modelling language and GIS developed at the University of Utrecht.