Budget constraint in reforestation meant for minimizing sediment load at a watershed outlet

Abstract

Policy and decision makers dealing with environmental conservation and land use planning often require identifying potential sites for contributing to minimize sediment flow reaching riverbeds. This could be one of the environmental objectives of reforestation initiatives. An Integer Programming (IP) formulation for selecting a predefined number of locations to minimize sediment load at a watershed outlet has been previously developed in [1]. This paper tests that formulation under the assumption that the area to be reforested is not known in advance, a budget constraint is included instead. Therefore the extension of the reforested area is subject to this budget constraint, which makes the problem more complex. Several experiments are performed for two watersheds in South Dakota in the USA. The results show the sediment load at the watershed outlet as well as the erosion levels, slopes and distances to the riverbeds of the locations selected to be reforested.