Metaheuristics for agricultural land use optimization. A review

Abstract

Agricultural landscapes presently cover about 46 % of earth terrestrial surface. This cultivated area is decreasing, whereas the global food demand is projected to increase up to 70 % in 2050. The intensification of agriculture is not a solution to this food issue because intensive agriculture has often resulted in pollution and loss of biodiversity. On the other hand, mechanistic models with optimization algorithms can be used to design alternative land uses for sustainable agriculture. Here, we present a review of metaheuristics for land use optimization reported in 50 articles including 38 case studies carried out in 16 countries. Our main conclusions are: 1) the success of metaheuristics is problem-dependent. In general, metaheuristics enable search to escape from local optima and find a good global approximation solution.2) The choice of a given metaheuristic for solving a given problem seems to be driven by its historical use in a research team and by its popularity outside the metaheuristics research community, rather than by the characteristics of the problems to be solved and by the latest results from the metaheuristics research community. 3) Stakeholders of land use are increasingly involved at different levels of the land use optimization procedure and multi-actors decision-making methods are necessary to find trade-offs between their competing interests. 4) A future challenge is the use of parallelization techniques along with the hybridization of different metaheuristics or of metaheuristics with other optimization methods.

Operational Research Techniques Used for Addressing Biodiversity Objectives into Forest Management: An Overview

“…Selecting the appropriate analysis tool for a particular issue is a difficult decision, as many authors have confirmed, both when talking about multi-criteria decision theories [30] and metaheuristic techniques [31]. To sum up, as it was stated: "There is no method that is universally best or even applicable for all situations."…”

Land Use Optimization Using the Fuzzy Mathematical-Spatial Approach: A Case Study of Chelgerd Watershed, Iran

“…They demonstrated the effectiveness of this algorithm through representation of optimal solutions with different priority and better application of non-linear objective functions in comparison to linear functions. Memmah et al (2015) presented a review of 38 case studies about land use optimization using metaheuristics. Some of their conclusions are as follows: "the success of metaheuristics is problem-dependent and a future challenge is the use of parallelization techniques along with the hybridization of different metaheuristics or of metaheuristics with other optimization methods".…”

Agroecological transition: A viability model to assess soil restoration

“…Models of soil preservation dealing with both ecological and economic objectives have already been developed, e.g., see Dogliotti, Rossing, and van Ittersum (2004) and Seppelt and Voinov (2002), for multiparcel management, and Memmah, Lescourret, Xin, and Lavigne (2015) for a review of different modeling approaches. Here, we apply tools developed in the framework of viability theory based on set valued analysis and mainly devoted to the control of dynamic systems with constraints.…”