Date of Award

8-2009

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Legacy Department

Mathematics

Committee Chair/Advisor

Shier, Dr. Douglas

Committee Member

Kerivin , Dr. Herve

Committee Member

Tonkyn , Dr. David

Committee Member

Saltzman , Dr. Matthew

Abstract

Over the past decades, a number of mathematical models and solution techniques have been developed to preserve reserve sites for species and their natural habitats. Two optimization models for designing spatially compact ecological reserve systems are addressed here as zero-one integer programming problems. These formulations have a bicriteria objective function that is a combination of both boundary length and distance. The two formulations cluster the sites into a relatively small number of compact groups while preserving a required number of sites that contain a certain species using a given amount of resources. Two general types of approaches have been developed to solve the resulting mathematical models: exact and heuristic algorithms.

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