Multi-objective optimization can balance trade-offs among boreal caribou, biodiversity, and climate change objectives when conservation hotspots do not overlap

Abstract

The biodiversity and climate change crises have led countries—including Canada—to commit to protect more land and inland waters and to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations. Canada is also obligated to recover populations of at-risk species, including boreal caribou. Canada has the opportunity to expand its protected areas network to protect hotspots of high value for biodiversity and climate mitigation. However, co-occurrence of hotspots is rare. Here we ask: is it possible to expand the network to simultaneously protect areas important for boreal caribou, other species at risk, climate refugia, and carbon stores? We used linear programming to prioritize areas for protection based on these conservation objectives, and assessed how prioritization for multiple, competing objectives affected the outcome for each individual objective. Our multi-objective approach produced reasonably strong representation of value across objectives. Although trade-offs were required, the multi-objective outcome was almost always better than when we ignored one objective to maximize value for another, highlighting the risk of assuming that a plan based on one objective will also result in strong outcomes for others. Multi-objective optimization approaches could be used to plan for protected areas networks that address biodiversity and climate change objectives, even when hotspots do not co-occur.

Protecting boreal caribou habitat can help conserve biodiversity and safeguard large quantities of soil carbon in Canada

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Optimal Leg Linkage Design for Horizontal Propel of a Walking Robot Using Non-Dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm

“…Instead, it revealed a spectrum of Paretooptimal solutions, each tailored to different design and performance criteria. This multi-solution landscape is particularly invaluable in real-world applications where design requirements may vary based on specific contexts [68].…”

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“…Al 6 : Differentiated cost sharing, maximizing the goals of the owner, and revenue sharing. The objective function is shown in Equation (17).…”