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Connectivity in priority area selection for conservation

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The spatial relations of sites within networks of priority areas for conservation is critical to the long-term maintenance of key genetic, population and ecosystem processes. However, these relations have received relatively little attention in the development of mathematical methods for objectively identifying such networks. Here we present a novel heuristic for incorporating connectivity explicitly as part of the model constraints, provide an integer linear programming formulation for the same problem, describe an integer cutting procedure which defines a sequence of non-decreasing lower bounds on the optimal solution and report the results of some computational experiments using these algorithms.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to I. Faria, S.F. Jackson and A.S.L. Rodrigues for assistance and discussion, and to two anonymous referees whose comments significantly improved the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Inst. Sup. de Agronomia, Tapada da Ajuda, 1349-017, Lisbon, Portugal

    J. Orestes Cerdeira

  2. Biodiversity and Macroecology Group, Department of Animal and Plant Sciences, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, S10 2TN, UK

    Kevin J. Gaston

  3. Inst. Sup. de Economia e Gestão, Rua do Quelhas 6, 1200-781, Lisbon, Portugal

    Leonor S. Pinto

Authors
  1. J. Orestes Cerdeira
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  2. Kevin J. Gaston
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  3. Leonor S. Pinto
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Correspondence to J. Orestes Cerdeira.

Additional information

This author's research was financially supported by the Portuguese foundation for Science and Technology (FCT).

This paper is part of this author's Ph.D. research.

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Cerdeira, J.O., Gaston, K.J. & Pinto, L.S. Connectivity in priority area selection for conservation. Environ Model Assess 10, 183–192 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10666-005-9008-4

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