Abstract:

Economically Optimal Management of a Metapopulation

An informational revolution is underway in the natural sciences that is generating a comprehensive picture of 
meso- and micro-scale phenomena of the biosphere that appear as previously unrecognized spatial patterns in 
natural and man-influenced landscapes. These patterns, in turn, pose new questions about spatial-dynamic processes 
at various scales in coupled human and natural systems. Many of these questions are spawning new paradigms that 
focus explicitly on space and the manner in which the dynamics of patterns are generated. 

With all of this new information, a natural question to ask is: what are the implications for managing natural 
resources? And, how does the answer to that question depend on the spatial characteristics of the resource, 
such as spatial heterogeneity and dispersal processes? To provide qualitative insights into these questions, 
we develop a stylized bioeconomic model of a metapopulation. We use the model to numerically investigate optimal 
spatial-dynamic harvesting policies for a metapopulation and the consequences of implementing policies that 
treat the resource as if it is uniformly distributed over a homogenous environment.