Multiobjective programing in watershed management: A study of the Charleston Watershed

A multiple‐objective approach to decision making in watershed management is developed and demonstrated within the framework of nonlinear programing by means of the case study of the Charleston watershed in southern Arizona. The effects of various land treatments and management practices on water runoff, sediment, recreation, wildlife levels, and commercial potential of a study area are investigated, constraints on the available land and capital being observed. This leads to a model with five objective functions to be maximized under 18 constraints. In an iterative manner the decision maker proceeds from one noninferior solution to another, comparing sets of land management activities for reaching specified goals and evaluating trade‐offs between individual objective functions. This technique, labeled Trade, involves the formulation of a surrogate objective function and the use of the cutting plane method to solve the general nonlinear problem; it hopefully provides a compromise between computationally intractable and excessively simplified approaches to truly multiobjective watershed management.