Optimal Management of Environmental and Land Resources in a Reservoir Watershed by Multiobjective Programming

The conflict between environmental protection of reservoir water quality and the economic development by different uses of land within a watershed is a problem that constantly confronts public officials in regional planning, as experienced in many developing countries. This analysis applied multiobjective linear programming (MOLP) techniques to land resource allocation in order to evaluate the sustainable strategy of land development in a reservoir region. The information incorporated into the optimization objectives include economic benefits characterized by income and employment level, and water quality impacts related to the total discharges of target pollutants. The constraint set thereby consists of the limitations of carrying capacity of various land-use programs and assimilative capacity corresponding to different pollution impacts on water quality. The practical implementation is assessed by a case study of the Tweng-Wen reservoir watershed system in Taiwan. By using the compromise programming technique and the multiobjective simplex method, it shows that increasing the residential area is a feasible option if pollution can be controlled properly in these new communities, but livestock husbandry should not be allowed under any circumstance within the Tweng-Wen reservoir watershed.