Spatial Dynamics of Green Corridors

Vincent Boulanger, Max Bruciamacchie, Sandrine Chauchard, Arnaud Dragicevic (), Jean-Luc Dupouey and Anne Stenger ()
Additional contact information
Vincent Boulanger: Office National des Forêts
Max Bruciamacchie: Laboratoire d'Economie Forestière, INRA - AgroParisTech
Sandrine Chauchard: Université de Lorraine – Écologie et Écophysiologie Forestières
Arnaud Dragicevic: Chaire Forêts pour Demain AgroParisTech – Office National des Forêts
Jean-Luc Dupouey: Université de Lorraine – Écologie et Écophysiologie Forestières

No 2013-05, Working Papers - Cahiers du LEF from Laboratoire d'Economie Forestiere, AgroParisTech-INRA

Abstract: Forest management aims at building ecological networks that minimize the impacts on timber production. We formalize the construction of ecological networks in forest environments as the optimal control dynamic graph-theoretic problem. The ecological network is based on a set of bioreserves and patches linked by green corridors. The network is defined as a graph, in which bioreserves, which host the species, are represented by the target nodes provided with an attraction function. The role of patches, which are represented by the unmarked nodes, is to receive the species before redirecting them to bioreserves. We consider two cases: a case of complete graph, where the ecological network is fully connected, and a case of incomplete graph, where the ecological network is partially connected. We use an ecologically and economically weighted Mahalanobis distance when dealing with the species migration through the grid. We find that the connectivity between areas depends on their ecological similarity. In both cases, at the equilibrium, the ecological network maintains its connectedness while minimizing the opportunity costs of timber production weighted by the distances between the nodes. Whether the graph is complete or incomplete, the optimal control imposes specific conditions on the shadow values. Our simulations show that taking into account the opportunity costs of timber production is essential to determine the economic soundness of the ecological project, but the optimality threshold depends on the type of network that is envisaged.

Keywords: Bioeconomics; Graph Theory; Optimal Control; Spatial Dynamics; Green Corridors; Timber Production; Opportunity Cost. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C61 C65 C67 N5 Q57 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 34 pages
Date: 2013-10, Revised 2013-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-env
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www6.nancy.inra.fr/lef/Cahiers-du-LEF/2013/2013-05 First version, 2010

Related works:
Working Paper: Spatial dynamics of green corridors (2013)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:lef:wpaper:2013-05

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers - Cahiers du LEF from Laboratoire d'Economie Forestiere, AgroParisTech-INRA Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sylvain CAURLa ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).