Reserve assemblage of critical areas: A zero–one programming approach

The problem of selecting land for inclusion within a protected reserve is formulated as a zero–one programming model. The model seeks to minimize the cost of delineating a reserve which protects critical habitat areas and significant biogeographic areas. As well, the provision of a buffer zone around an interior or core area is addressed, as are the spatial properties of contiguity and compactness. The model is applicable to both regular and irregular parcel systems. Two techniques that combine post-simplex branching and bounding with objective function bounding are presented for efficiently generating exact solutions. A hypothetical example demonstrates that medium-sized problems can be solved with modest computational effort.