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Partial Cover problems are optimization versions
of fundamental and well studied problems like {\sc Vertex Cover} and {\sc Dominating Set}.
Here one is interested in covering (or dominating) the maximum number of edges (or vertices) using a given number ($k$) of vertices, rather than covering all edges (or vertices). In general graphs, these problems are hard for parameterized complexity classes when parameterized by $k$.
It was recently shown by Amini et. al. [{\em FSTTCS 08}\,] that {\sc Partial Vertex Cover} and {\sc Partial Dominating Set} are fixed parameter tractable on large classes of sparse graphs, namely $H$-minor free graphs,
which include planar graphs and graphs of bounded genus. In particular, it was shown that on planar graphs both problems can be solved in time $2^{\cO(k)}n^{\cO(1)}$.
@InProceedings{fomin_et_al:LIPIcs.FSTTCS.2009.2318,
author = {Fomin, Fedor V. and Lokshtanov, Daniel and Raman, Venkatesh and Saurabh, Saket},
title = {{Subexponential Algorithms for Partial Cover Problems}},
booktitle = {IARCS Annual Conference on Foundations of Software Technology and Theoretical Computer Science},
pages = {193--201},
series = {Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
ISBN = {978-3-939897-13-2},
ISSN = {1868-8969},
year = {2009},
volume = {4},
editor = {Kannan, Ravi and Narayan Kumar, K.},
publisher = {Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
address = {Dagstuhl, Germany},
URL = {https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.FSTTCS.2009.2318},
URN = {urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-23186},
doi = {10.4230/LIPIcs.FSTTCS.2009.2318},
annote = {Keywords: Partial cover problems, parameterized complexity, subexponential time algorithms, irrelevant vertex technique}
}