Reserve design for species preservation

The problem of designing a natural area reserve for the preservation of species is approached as a zero-one integer program. The least-cost assemblage of parcels is sought for different numbers of species whose locales must be included within the reserve. The reserve itself is designed to include core parcels and buffer parcels which surround and protect the core. Compactness and contiguity of the reserve are promoted by the problem formulation. Solution is by a combination of a greedy heuristic followed by heuristic concentration which achieves a reduced set of variables for the zero-one program. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.