Wildlife reserve design with connectivity and buffer requirements

Abstract

AbstractThis paper deals with the problem of finding the optimal configuration of a network of land parcels connecting and protecting core areas through corridors and buffer areas within budget. We focus on polynomial‐sized integer linear programming formulations, building on previous research and borrowing some ideas from other authors. We establish the relationships between the proposed and past models in linear programming relaxation terms and test them on synthetic instances with up to 400 land parcels.