Minimizing landscape resistance for habitat conservation

Abstract

Modeling ecological connectivity is an area of increasing interest amongst biologists and conservation agencies. In the past few years, different modeling approaches have been used by experts in the field to understand the state of wildlife distribution. One of these approaches is based on modeling land as a resistive network. The analysis of electric current in such networks allows biologists to understand how random walkers (animals) move across the landscape. In this paper we present a MIP model and a Local Search approach to tackle the problem of minimizing the effective resistance in an electrical network. This is then mapped onto landscapes in order to decide which areas need restoration to facilitate the movement of wildlife.