A graphical user interface for the land-use change analysis system

In this thesis, a Motif-based user interface for utilizing the Land-Use Change Anal- ysis System is presented. The LUCAS Graphical User Interface (GUI) is a Windows- based user interface that allows access to the LUCAS software for users of different levels of experience. Early user of LUCAS are expected to be experts in landscape management. Explicit knowledge of the integration of socioeconomic and ecologi- cal variables is not required by users such as ecologists, economists, sociologists, or forestry personnel. To accomodate the needs of such experts, a graphical user inter- face (GUI) was developed for LUCAS. A GUI is the best way to provide an intuitive interface for an application which integrates interdisciplinary data of different scales and type. One of the most challenging aspects of designing an intuitive interface for LUCAS was to first understand the needs of landscape management, and then to develop the interface with these requirements in mind. The LUCAS GUI can be com- piled and executed on any workstation that supports the X-Window System Release 5 (X11R5) and the Open Software Foundation's (OSF) Motif 1.2.