Idle land previously used for manufacturing or agricultural industries are possible locations for new state parks. Vibrant ecosystems and areas for recreation can be created by replanting forests, restoring waterways, and introducing natural species to the area. 

New parks improve the populations of endangered species and restore their historical ranges. 

Creating new parks requires a serious investment in time and money to be successful. Therefore, careful planning is needed to properly create a park at a reasonable cost. 

• Represent the process of constructing a new state park of forests and ponds 

• Identify policies to decide how much land to reclaim each year 

• Asses how many animals to relocate. 

• Find the optimal policy to minimize the cost of this process. 

The details of how forest and water ways are reclaimed, as well as how wildlife populations grow naturally are generalized significantly. Scope of the project is to find the best policy to create new state parks in the future.

1. Sequential Model

• Uses several state and decision variables that evolve each iteration (year) based on random events (birth, death, land failures) and policy decisions (amount of land/water to reclaim) 

2. Simulated for 50 years

• Assumes population and park size will be stable at that point

3. Guided by three heuristic polices 

• Goal to minimize costs and maximize species population

Initial population and park size 

• Initial 1,500 acres of forest and 15 acres  

Increasing park size each year

• Maximum increase per year is 1000 forest acres and 50 pond acres

• Maximum size is 15,000 forest acreages and 500 pond acreage 

• Assume Restoration costs increase overtime 

• Assume a random percentage of restored land will fail each year

Population change each year

• Focusing on the population of black bears, deer, and fish

• Logistic population change equation calculates the basic of the population change

  • Density-dependent method - population increases faster when ample space is available, slower if the population is near the carrying capacity, and decreases population if it passes carrying capacity.

• Population affected by predation, births, and deaths  

• Animals are relocated to if population gets too high