Spatial optimization for wildlife and timber in managed forest ecosystems

This paper presents several nonlinear formulations for land allocation that optimize spatial layout for a single time period and that have the property that the number of choice variables increases linearly with the level of spatial resolution. Two nonlinear models are presented: one that accounts for spatial pattens with a cellular grid, and an alternative that uses geometric shapes. The formulations account for four criteria important to wildlife: the amount of edge, the juxtaposition of different habitat types for cover versus feeding needs, the dispersal distance between favorable habitats, and the minimum size of a patch of habitat. Case examples demonstrate the selection of different sizes of cuts as well as different spatial distributions of the cuts over the landscape, in response to different habitat needs for several species of wildlife. Sensitivity analyses were performed on alternative formulations and objective function coefficients. These model formulations are initial exploratory efforts, and extensions to this study are identified.