Optimal configuration of a wildlife corridor system

Yicheng Wang, Peng Qin, Shimei Li, Hayri Önal

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Establishing wildlife corridors to link detached habitat patches is a widely advocated conservation strategy to reduce the adverse impacts of habitat fragmentation. Given the scarcity of conservation resources, designing an efficient corridor system calls for an optimization approach. The optimal configuration of a wildlife corridor system involving multiple habitat patches poses significant challenges, both methodologically and computationally. This study proposes a two-stage procedure for that purpose. In the first stage, we determine a best-quality corridor between each pair of habitat patches using the method described in Wang et al. (2022). In the second stage, we select a subset of those corridors to assemble a least-cost corridor system using a mixed integer linear programming model presented in this paper. We use an illustrative example to demonstrate the workings of the two-stage method, and then apply it to a real dataset for an area in Cumberland County, Nova Scotia, Canada, involving 1039 irregular land parcels. Results show that an efficient corridor system where each habitat patch is connected to some neighboring habitat patches through a specified minimum number of corridors can be identified conveniently in terms of both data processing and computational effort.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article numbere02560
JournalGlobal Ecology and Conservation
Volume46
DOIs
StatePublished - Oct 2023

Keywords

  • Biological conservation
  • Conservation planning
  • Habitat fragmentation
  • Mixed integer linear programming
  • Spatial optimization
  • Wildlife corridor

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics
  • Ecology
  • Nature and Landscape Conservation

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