Use of cellular automata in the study of variables involved in land use changes

The study of changes in land use has been included lately in territorial processes in order to opti- mize future management decisions. The different functions that the territory plays (production, aesthetic, and natural functions, etc.) make planning choices more difficult. This work focuses on the selection and combination of a set of indicators to analyze the variables through which the changes occur in the land used in viticulture for wine production. The proposed approach makes use of the Geographic Information System (GIS) in the development of a map of land use scenario. It is applied to a case study through a model involving cellular automata (CA) implemented with maps of suitability for viticulture and Markov chains. The use in this case of the CA is aimed at validating the scenario map in order to deduce the variables and the orientations of the farmers in the field of wine production.