{"id":1529,"date":"2011-09-30T22:09:54","date_gmt":"2011-10-01T02:09:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/?p=1529"},"modified":"2011-09-30T22:09:54","modified_gmt":"2011-10-01T02:09:54","slug":"grizzlies-pandas-and-optimal-ecological-structures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/2011\/09\/30\/grizzlies-pandas-and-optimal-ecological-structures\/","title":{"rendered":"Grizzlies, Pandas, and Optimal Ecological Structures"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last year, a group of students in one of my classes did a project on designing a grizzly bear habitat, inspired by the work at Cornell’s wonderful Institute for Computational Sustainability<\/a>. In that project, the goal was to pick out a collection of geographic areas that formed a contiguous zone that the grizzly’s could move freely through. As the ICS description<\/a> says:<\/p>\n

Land development often results in a reduction and fragmentation of natural habitat, which makes wildlife populations more vulnerable to local extinction. One method for alleviating the negative impact of land fragmentation is the creation of conservation corridors, which are continuous areas of protected land that link zones of biological significance.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>My colleague, Willem van Hoeve, had worked on variants of this problem<\/a> and had some nice data for the students to work with. The models were interesting in their own right, with the “contiguity” constraints causing the most challenge to the students. The results of the project were corridors that were much cheaper (by a factor of 10) than the estimates of the cost necessary to support the wildlife. The students did a great job (as Tepper MBA students generally do!) using AIMMS<\/a> to model and find solutions (are there other MBA students who come out knowing AIMMS? Not many I would bet!). But I was left with a big worry. The goal here was to find corridors linking “safe” regions for the grizzlies. But what keeps the grizzlies in the corridors? If you check out the diagram (not from the student project but from a research paper<\/a> by van Hoeve and his coauthors), you will see the safe areas in green, connected by thin brown lines representing the corridors.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It does seem that any self-respecting grizzly would say:\u00a0 “Hmmm…. I could walk 300 miles along this trail they have made for me, or go cross country and save a few miles.”\u00a0 The fact that the cross country trip goes straight through, say, Bozeman Montana, would be unfortunate for the grizzly (and perhaps the Bozemanians).\u00a0 But perhaps the corridors could be made appealing enough for the grizzlies to keep them off the interstates.<\/p>\n

I thought of this problem as I was planning a trip to China (which I am taking at the end of November).\u00a0 After seeing a picture of a ridiculously cute panda cub (not this one<\/a>, but similarly cute), my seven-year-old declared that we had to see the pandas.\u00a0 And, while there are pandas in the Beijing zoo, it was necessary to see the pandas in the picture, who turned out to be from Chengdu<\/a>.\u00a0 So my son was set on going to Chengdu.\u00a0 OK, fine with me:\u00a0 Shanghai is pretty expensive so taking a few days elsewhere works for me.<\/p>\n

As I explored the panda site, I found some of the research projects they are exploring<\/a>.\u00a0 And one was perfect for me!<\/p>\n

Construction and Optimization of the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding Ecological System<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>I was made for this project!\u00a0 First, I have the experience of watching my students work on grizzly ecosystems (hey, I am a professor:\u00a0 seeing a student do something is practically as good as doing it myself).\u00a0 Second, and more importantly, I have extensive experience in bamboo, which is, of course, the main food of the panda.\u00a0 My wife and I planted a “non-creeping” bamboo plant three years ago, and I have spent two years trying to exterminate it from our backyard without resorting to napalm.\u00a0 I was deep into negotiations to import a panda into Pittsburgh to eat the cursed plant before I finally seemed to gain the upper hand on the bamboo.\u00a0 But I fully expect the plant to reappear every time we go away for a weekend.<\/p>\n

Between my operations research knowledge and my battle-scars in the Great Bamboo Battle, I can’t think of anyone better to design Panda Ecological Systems.\u00a0 So, watch out “Chengdu Research Base on Giant Panda Breeding”:\u00a0 I am headed your way and I am ready to optimize your environment.\u00a0 And if I sneak away with a panda, rest assured that I can feed it well in Pittsburgh.<\/p>\n

This is part of the INFORMS September Blog Challenge<\/a> on operations research and the environment.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last year, a group of students in one of my classes did a project on designing a grizzly bear habitat, inspired by the work at Cornell’s wonderful Institute for Computational Sustainability. In that project, the goal was to pick out a collection of geographic areas that formed a contiguous zone that the grizzly’s could move … Continue reading “Grizzlies, Pandas, and Optimal Ecological Structures”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,58,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-applications","category-blog-challenge","category-environment"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1529"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1529\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}