A Genetic Algorithm solver for pest management control in Island systems

Island conservation management is a truly multidisciplinary problem that requires considerable knowledge of the characteristics of the ecosystem, species and their interactions. Nevertheless, this can be translated into an optimisation problem. Essentially, within a limited budget, a manager needs to select the conservation actions according to expected payoffs (in terms of protecting or restoring desired species) versus cost (the amount of resources/money) required for the actions. This paper presents the problem in terms of a knapsack formulation and develops optimisation techniques to solve it. From this, decision-support software is being developed, tailored to meet the needs of pest control on islands for conservation managers. The solver uses a Genetic Algorithm and incorporates a simplified model of the problem. The solver derives strategies that reduce the number of threats, allowing the preservation of desired species. However, the problem model needs further refinement to derive truly realistic options for conservation managers

Effectiveness Of Alternative Heuristic Algorithms For Identifying Indicative Minimum Requirements For Conservation Reserves

We compared the results of 30 heuristic reserve selection algorithms on the same large data set. Twelve of the algorithms were for presence-absence representation goals, designed to find a set of sites to represent all the land types in the study region at least once. Eighteen algorithms were intended to represent a minimum percentage of the total area of each land type. We varied the rules of the algorithms systematically to find the influence of individual rules or sequences of rules on efficiency of representation. Rankings of the algorithms according to relative numbers or areas of selected sites needed to achieve a specified representation target varied between the full data set and a subset and so appear to be data-dependent. We also ran optimizing algorithms to indicate the degree of suboptimality of the heuristics. For the presence-absence problems, the optimizing algorithms had the advantage of guaranteeing an optimal solution but had much longer running times than the heuristics. They showed that the solutions from good heuristics were 5-10% larger than optimal. The optimizing algorithms failed to solve the proportional area problems, although heuristics solved them quickly. Both heuristics and optimizing algorithms have important roles to play in conservation planning. The choice of method will depend on the size of data sets, the representation goal, the required time for analysis, and the importance of a guaranteed optimal solution

Optimality In Reserve Selection Algorithms: When Does It Matter And How Much?

This paper responds to recent criticisms in Biological Conservation of heuristic reserve selection algorithms. These criticisms primarily concern the fact that heuristic algorithms cannot guarantee an optimal solution to the problem of representing a group of targeted natural features in a subset of the sites in a region. We discuss optimality in the context of a range of needs for conservation planning. We point out that classical integer linear programming methods that guarantee an optimal solution, like branch and bound algorithms, are currently intractable for many realistic problems. We also show that heuristics have practical advantages over classical methods and that suboptimality is not necessarily a disadvantage for many real-world applications. Further work on alternative reserve selection algorithms is certainly needed, but the necessary criteria for assessing their utility must be broader than mathematical optimality

Reinventing residual reserves in the sea: Are we favouring ease of establishment over need for protection?

© 2014 The Authors. As systems of marine protected areas (MPAs) expand globally, there is a risk that new MPAs will be biased toward places that are remote or unpromising for extractive activities, and hence follow the trend of terrestrial protected areas in being 'residual' to commercial uses. Such locations typically provide little protection to the species and ecosystems that are most exposed to threatening processes. There are strong political motivations to establish residual reserves that minimize costs and conflicts with users of natural resources. These motivations will likely remain in place as long as success continues to be measured in terms of area (km2) protected. The global pattern of MPAs was reviewed and appears to be residual, supported by a rapid growth of large, remote MPAs. The extent to which MPAs in Australia are residual nationally and also regionally within the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) Marine Park was also examined. Nationally, the recently announced Australian Commonwealth marine reserves were found to be strongly residual, making almost no difference to 'business as usual' for most ocean uses. Underlying this result was the imperative to minimize costs, but without the spatial constraints of explicit quantitative objectives for representing bioregions or the range of ecological features in highly protected zones. In contrast, the 2004 rezoning of the GBR was exemplary, and the potential for residual protection was limited by applying a systematic set of planning principles, such as representing a minimum percentage of finely subdivided bioregions. Nonetheless, even at this scale, protection was uneven between bioregions. Within-bioregion heterogeneity might have led to no-take zones being established in areas unsuitable for trawling with a risk that species assemblages differ between areas protected and areas left available for trawling. A simple four-step framework of questions for planners and policy makers is proposed to help reverse the emerging residual tendency of MPAs and maximize their effectiveness for conservation. This involves checks on the least-cost approach to establishing MPAs in order to avoid perverse outcomes

The performance of existing networks of conservation areas in representing biodiversity

It is widely held that existing reserve systems are inadequate in representing the diversity of biological features of the regions in which they reside. Evidence for this argument has, however, derived principally from analyses of the efficiency of networks when compared with a minimum set that represents each species at least once. Here, we examine the efficiency of the system of Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs) in representing wetland plants in fen sites in the Scottish Borders, a region where reserve networks might be expected a priori to perform reasonably well in this regard. The results support the general contention that networks have been designated in an inefficient manner. However, examined in terms of effectiveness (measured as the gap between the representation target required and the one attained by the existing network), the SSSI system is actually a rather good way of representing diversity. This result is consistent when each of several very different representation targets is evaluated, and suggests that a more balanced approach to evaluating the performance of reserve networks should be employed, and that general statements based on existing analyses should be treated cautiously

Habitat-dependent outdoor recreation and conservation organizations can enable recreational fishers to contribute to conservation of coastal marine ecosystems

Stakeholder engagement is essential to conserve ecosystems and associated biodiversity. Outdoor recreation specialists represent stakeholder groups that often rely on specific healthy ecosystems and have unique incentives to contribute to conservation and stewardship. We introduce the concept of habitat-dependent outdoor recreation conservation organizations (HDORCOs) and their potential to harness outdoor recreation enthusiasm to achieve ecosystem-scale conservation objectives. We identify potential roles for HDORCOs in nurturing pro-environmental attitudes and facilitating stewardship behavior among recreationists, focusing on examples from recreational fishing specialists and coastal marine ecosystems. While HDORCOs have achieved conservation outcomes in a range of settings, transferability across recreational specializations and ecological, cultural, socioeconomic, and governance contexts could remain challenging and potentially requires further development of the HDORCO concept. Communication with HDORCOs is one strategy to enhance engagement of recreationists, stakeholder groups not traditionally associated with pro-environmental behavior, in ecosystem-scale conservation efforts

The Reliability of Test Discriminations

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/66658/2/10.1177_001316445501500404.pd

Using temporally explicit habitat suitability models to assess threats to mobile species and evaluate the effectiveness of marine protected areas

A principal role of marine protected areas (MPAs) is to mitigate the decline of biodiversity. A key part of this role is to reduce the effects of fisheries on bycatch of vulnerable species. Bycatch can have an impact on species by reducing population sizes, and an ecosystem-level impact through the significant removal of biomass and subsequent trophic changes. In this regard, it is crucial to refine methods for quantifying interactions between fisheries and bycatch species, and to manage these interactions spatially. A new method is presented for quantifying interactions between fisheries and bycatch species at high spatial and temporal resolutions. Temporally explicit species distribution models are used to examine temporal dynamics of fisheries and bycatch. This method is applied to Australia's Eastern Tuna and Billfish Fishery to estimate interactions with seven principal bycatch species. The ability of MPAs to reduce bycatch is evaluated, and considerations are outlined for the spatial management of fishery-bycatch species interactions. Australia's Commonwealth Marine Reserve Network had a minimal impact on bycatch reduction under both the 2012 proclaimed and the 2015 panel-recommended zonings. These results highlight the need for threats to marine biodiversity to be incorporated directly into design of MPAs, and for close scrutiny of assumptions that threats will be incidentally abated after MPAs have been proclaimed, or that off-reserve mechanisms will compensate for inadequacies of MPAs

Achieving Practical and Accurate Indoor Navigation for People with Visual Impairments

Methods that provide accurate navigation assistance to people with visual impairments often rely on instrumenting the environment with specialized hardware infrastructure. In particular, approaches that use sensor networks of Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacons have been shown to achieve precise localization and accurate guidance while the structural modifications to the environment are kept at minimum. To install navigation infrastructure, however, a number of complex and time-critical activities must be performed. The BLE beacons need to be positioned correctly and samples of Bluetooth signal need to be collected across the whole environment. These tasks are performed by trained personnel and entail costs proportional to the size of the environment that needs to be instrumented. To reduce the instrumentation costs while maintaining a high accuracy, we improve over a traditional regression-based localization approach by introducing a novel, graph-based localization method using Pedestrian Dead Reckoning (PDR) and particle filter. We then study how the number and density of beacons and Bluetooth samples impact the balance between localization accuracy and set-up cost of the navigation environment. Studies with users show the impact that the increased accuracy has on the usability of our navigation application for the visually impaired