Which interventions contribute most to the net effect of England's agri-environment schemes on pollination services?

Image, M., Gardner, E., Clough, Y., Kunnin, W. E., Potts, S. G., Smith, H .G., Stone, G. N., Westbury, Duncan B and Breeze, T. D. (2022) Which interventions contribute most to the net effect of England's agri-environment schemes on pollination services? Landscape Ecology, 38. pp. 271-291.

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Abstract

Context Agri-environment schemes support land management interventions that benefit biodiversity, environmental objectives, and other public goods. Process-based model simulations suggest the English scheme, as implemented in 2016, increased wild bee pollination services to pollinator-dependent crops and non-crop areas in a geographically heterogeneous manner. Objectives We investigated which interventions drove the scheme-wide predicted pollination service increase to oilseed rape, field beans and non-cropped areas. We determined whether the relative contribution of each intervention was related to floral and/or nesting resource quality of the intervention, area of uptake, or placement in the landscape. Methods We categorised interventions into functional groups and used linear regression to determine the relationship between predicted visitation rate increase and each category?s area within a 10 km grid tile. We compared the magnitude of the regression coefficients to measures of resource quality, area of uptake nationally, and placement to infer the factors underpinning this relationship. Results Hedgerow/woodland edge management had the largest positive effect on pollination service change, due to high resource quality. Fallow areas were also strong drivers, despite lower resource quality, implying effective placement. Floral margins had limited benefit due to later resource phenology. Interventions had stronger effects where there was less pre-existing semi-natural habitat. Conclusions Future schemes could support greater and more resilient pollination service in arable landscapes by promoting hedgerow/woodland edge management and fallow interventions. Including early-flowering species and increasing uptake would improve the effect of floral margins. Spatial targeting of interventions should consider landscape context and pairing complimentary interventions to maximise whole-scheme effectiveness.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Keywords:	Pollination services, Agri-environment schemes, Bees, Semi-natural habitat, Interventions
Divisions:	Land and Property Management
Depositing User:	Professor Duncan Westbury
Date Deposited:	18 Apr 2024 18:29
Last Modified:	18 Apr 2024 18:29
URI:	https://rau.repository.guildhe.ac.uk/id/eprint/16597

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