INTRODUCTION

This Open-File Report is being submitted in accordance with Geographic Research and Applications (GRA) Prospectus guidelines. It is intended to be a report on the research activities and progress made in the third and fourth quarters of fiscal year (FY) 2001, an extension of the literature review in the March 2001 Open-File Report, and an outline of the next steps that will be taken in the project. This report is organized in eight sections. Section 1 gives a general update and describes the progress made by our collaborators and research partners. Section 2 reviews important literature found since the last report and explains how we intend to use it. Sections 3 through 6 describe major project stages and the research products that are being developed for each of them. In each section, we first report achievements and then outline the next steps for each project stage. Section 7 elaborates on the framework for the Land Use Portfolio Model that was developed for the previous Open-File Report. Section 8 contains the references for this paper and other selected references.