Optimal spatial management of renewable resources: matching policy scope to ecosystem scale

We investigate the characteristics of an optimally managed spatially explicit renewable resource system. The bioeconomic system is depicted with a metapopulation model where the subpopulations are connected by dispersal processes and are affected by the spatial distribution of harvesting effort. We characterize the optimal way to distribute harvesting effort over space and time in order to optimize returns from this spatial/dynamic system. We also investigate how the optimal spatial allocation of effort, harvesting, and biomass compare with second-best allocations that ignore spatial processes in this system. We find that optimal instruments reflect the interplay between the spatial gradient of rents and the spatial gradient of biological dispersal. Using a simple parameterization to explore qualitative properties in several specific examples, we find that second-best solutions blend or average results of the differentiated case and differ in intuitive ways from first-best optima.