US EPA

EPA announced the availability of the draft report, Updates to the Demographic and Spatial Allocation Models to Produce Integrated Climate and Land Use Scenarios (ICLUS) for a 30-day public comment period. The ICLUS version 2 (v2) modeling tool furthered land change modeling by providing nationwide housing development scenarios up to 2100. ICLUS V2 includes updated population and land use data sets and addressing limitations identified in ICLUS v1 in both the migration and spatial allocation models. The companion user guide describes the development of ICLUS v2 and the updates that were made to the original data sets and the demographic and spatial allocation models.

[2017 UPDATE] Get the latest version of ICLUS and stay up-to-date by signing up to the ICLUS mailing list.

The first version of the Integrated Climate and Land Use Scenarios (ICLUS) project modeled population, residential development, and impervious surface cover changes by decade to the year 2100 consistent with four global carbon emissions storylines and a baseline. The current report discusses improvements to the underlying models of ICLUS that result in version 2 (v2). ICLUS v2 is consistent with updated global socioeconomic scenarios (e.g., Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs)) and new global climate change model targets (e.g., Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs)).

Improvements include the use of updated population and land use/cover data sets, integration of changing climate variables within the migration model, inclusion of transportation network capacity and its increase over time, growth in commercial and industrial land uses, and the use of population density-driven demands for growth of residential housing, commercial development, and industry.

This report demonstrates the effect of these improvements by comparing national and regional results among the SSP and RCP combinations used and the two climate models selected. ICLUS v2 shows differences in population migration patterns by including climate variables that change over time rather than ones that are static. Additionally, changing commercial and industrial land uses can drive patterns of new urban growth that have consequences for many environmental endpoints.

The GIS tool enables users to run SERGoM with the population projections developed for the ICLUS project and allows users to modify the spatial allocation housing density across the landscape.

U.S. EPA. Updates to the Demographic and Spatial Allocation Models to Produce Integrated Climate and Land Use Scenarios (ICLUS) (Version 2) (External Review Draft). U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC, EPA/600/R-14/324, 2016.