Designing Optimal Corridor Network for a Non-Contiguous Forest Landscape using Integer Programming Approach

抄録

Designing a corridor network for biodiversity concerns within forest landscape can be handled as a land-use allocation problem within an integer programming framework. In reality, a given landscape is often disturbed by manmade roads or water channels, which can transform the landscape into fragmented forest islands. In this paper, we propose a systematic modeling approach to explore the optimal corridor network for a non-contiguous forest landscape, characterized by several forest islands. Our approach first identifies if any separated forest islands exist as subgroups of landscape connection, and then looks for an optimal corridor network within each forest island or subgroup if any exist. We adapt the idea of maximum flow problems to identify forest islands, and then seek an optimal corridor in each forest island using integer programming. For demonstrative purposes, we conduct a computational experiment of our modeling approach using part of an existing forest landscape in Vietnam.