Methods and applications in natural resources management

Abstract

This special volume focuses on operations research (OR) methods and applications concerning the topic of natural resources management. It is related to and follows a former one (the volume number 190) devoted to OR in agriculture and forest management.Most of the papers included in this volume are connected with forestry, crop, livestock, and fish farming, while a few of them deal with water management and land and environmental issues. All in all, the present volume is another effort to bring together contributions from different disciplines and countries in the world and with the common goal of applying the most advanced results in theoretical and applied sciences to natural resources management. In the end, the volume has collected twenty-five high quality papers covering many aspects of operations research in natural resources management, considering both theoretical issues and applications. All papers have been reviewed according to the standards of the Annals of Operations Research. Accepted contributions to this volume have been selected frommore than fifty submissions, all of them dealing with many different methods and interesting applications. The scope of these papers ranges from OR methods to original applications in natural resources management. Some of the research was presented at the EURO Summer Institute (ESI) devoted toOR in Agriculture and Forest Management held in Lleida (Spain) in 2009. The ESI was supported byEURO: theAssociation ofEuropeanORSocieties (http://www.euro-online. org) and organized by the EUROWorking Group on OR in Agriculture and Forest Management, i.e., ORAFM, (http://www.orafm.org). Since 2003 the group has had regular meetings in Europe at approximately yearly intervals, usually within the EURO conferences. In par-