Some Operations Research Applications in the Conservation of Wildland Resources

This paper was written to indicate some of the limited O.R. work done on wildland problems and to call attention to the ever-increasing opportunity for more effort. The first example presents a beginning approach to the problem of minimizing wildland fire costs—one which shows that a sizable increase in prevention and presuppression activities can lead to considerable savings if total costs include fire losses. The second example challenges the commonly used strategy of insect pest control—in large part because of the non-Markovian nature of the problem. The third example deals with the application of linear programming to the problem of managing a wildland area as a continuing source of one or more products or services. Finally, two examples of simulation techniques—applied to forest management and forest sampling—are described briefly.