An optimisation approach for designing wildlife corridors with ecological and spatial considerations

The fragmentation of wildlife habitats caused by anthropogenic activities has reduced biodiversity and impaired key ecosystem functions. Wildlife corridors play an important role in linking detached habitats. optimal design such considering spatial, ecological economic factors is addressed this paper. We present a novel graph-theoretic optimisation approach mixed-integer linear programming model to determine corridor connecting two given habitat patches. maximises the total quality satisfies pre-specified width length requirements under resource constraint. Compared models presented literature, our conceptually simpler, it computationally convenient. applied real dataset for Eldorado National Forest California, USA, involving 1,363 irregular land parcels. can be extended multiple that connect or more existing