PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Zhengxin Lang
AU  - Sergey S. Rabotyagov
AU  - Se Jong Cho
AU  - Todd Campbell
AU  - Catherine L. Kling
TI  - Good Seeds Bear Good Fruit: Using Benefit-to-Cost Ratios in Multiobjective Spatial Optimization under Epistasis
AID  - 10.3368/wple.96.4.531
DP  - 2020 Nov 01
TA  - Land Economics
PG  - 531--551
VI  - 96
IP  - 4
4099  - http://le.uwpress.org/content/96/4/531.short
4100  - http://le.uwpress.org/content/96/4/531.full
SO  - Land Econ2020 Nov 01; 96
AB  - Many biophysical models exhibit epistasis (interdependence), where a conservation action impacts the effectiveness of another elsewhere. At the same time, ranking conservation actions according to the independent benefit-to-cost ratios is cost-efficient when epistasis is absent. We use benefit-to-cost rankings as starting points for an evolutionary algorithm employing an epistatic biophysical model. We model a variety of conservation actions to assess trade-offs for sediment reduction and wildlife conservation in the study watershed. We find that despite the presence of epistasis, the weighted benefit-to-cost ratio-derived solutions perform remarkably well in the decision space, but effects in objective space need the model evaluation. (JEL Q25, Q52)