Innovative Software Development in GIS

Chapter 7

GENEXP-LANDSITES: a 2D Agricultural Landscape Generating Piece of Software

7.1. Introduction

The GENEXP-LANDSITES software is a two-dimensional (2D) random agricultural landscape generator, first developed in 2003 as part of a study on the coexistence of genetically modified crops with traditional crops. It uses tools stemming from spatial statistics and algorithmic geometry. Its main goal was to provide agricultural landscape maps to test the role of certain characteristics of these landscapes faced with transgene dissemination. Indeed, until the beginning of the noughties, agrobiologists worked with dissemination models that were developed at the level of a few fields and lacked any real data allowing them to scale up to the level of a landscape, even though various studies had shown it was necessary [ANG 02]. On a practical level, GENEXP-LANDSITES offers the agrobiologist user a set of methods to generate and describe landscapes – field pattern and land use – which are then used as input for gene flow models.

The following chapter follows the main outline of our book: a context description (section 7.2), a presentation of the major functionalities of GENEXP-LANDSITES, and the description of a case study (sections 7.3 and 7.4), the architecture details (section 7.5) and a few elements about the user and developer community (section 7.6).

7.2. Context

Landscape¹ simulation has been an important field of research for over 20 years in landscape ecology, and, more recently, ...