A multi-objective optimization approach associated to climate change analysis to improve Systematic Conservation Planning

Abstract

Biodiversity conservation has been since long an academic community concern, leading scientists to propose strategies to effectively meet conservation goals. In particular, Systematic Conservation Planning (SCP) aims to determine the most cost effective way of investing in conservation actions. SCP can be formalized by the Set-Covering Problem, which is NP-hard. SCP is inherently multi-objective, although it has been usually treated with a monobjective and static approach. Here, we propose a multi-objective solution for SCP, increasing its flexibility and complexity, and, at the same time, augmenting the quality of provided information, which reinforces decision-making. We used ensemble forecasting, considering future climate simulations to estimate species occurrence projected to 2080. Our method identifies sites: 1) of high priority for conservation; 2) with significant risk of investment; and, 3) that may become attractive in the future. To the best of our knowledge, this application to a real-world problem in ecology is the first attempt to apply multi-objective optimization to SCP associated to climate forecasting, in a dynamic spatial prioritization analysis for biodiversity conservation.