RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Good Seeds Bear Good Fruit: Using Benefit-to-Cost Ratios in Multiobjective Spatial Optimization under Epistasis
JF Land Economics
JO Land Econ
FD University of Wisconsin Press
SP 531
OP 551
DO 10.3368/wple.96.4.531
VO 96
IS 4
A1 Zhengxin Lang
A1 Sergey S. Rabotyagov
A1 Se Jong Cho
A1 Todd Campbell
A1 Catherine L. Kling
YR 2020
UL http://le.uwpress.org/content/96/4/531.abstract
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)