| 1. |
- Dicks, Lynn V., et al.
(författare)
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Farmland conservation
- 2015
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Ingår i: What works in conservation. - 9781783741571 - 9781783741588 - 9781783741595 - 9781783741601 - 9781783741618 ; , s. 245-284
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Bokkapitel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This book is meant as a guide to the evidence available for different conservation interventions and as a starting point in assessing their effectiveness. The assessments are based on the available evidence for the target group of species for each intervention. The assessment may therefore refer to different species or habitat to the one(s) you are considering. Before making any decisions about implementing interventions it is vital that you read the more detailed accounts of the evidence in order to assess their relevance for your study species or system.Full details of the evidence are available at www.conservationevidence.comThere may also be significant negative side-effects on the target groups or other species or communities that have not been identified in this assessment.A lack of evidence means that we have been unable to assess whether or not an intervention is effective or has any harmful impacts.
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| 2. |
- Alejandre, Elizabeth M., et al.
(författare)
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Characterization Factors to Assess Land Use Impacts on Pollinator Abundance in Life Cycle Assessment
- 2023
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Ingår i: Environmental Science and Technology. - : American Chemical Society (ACS). - 0013-936X .- 1520-5851. ; 57:8, s. 3445-3454
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- While wild pollinators play a key role in global food production, their assessment is currently missing from the most commonly used environmental impact assessment method, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). This is mainly due to constraints in data availability and compatibility with LCA inventories. To target this gap, relative pollinator abundance estimates were obtained with the use of a Delphi assessment, during which 25 experts, covering 16 nationalities and 45 countries of expertise, provided scores for low, typical, and high expected abundance associated with 24 land use categories. Based on these estimates, this study presents a set of globally generic characterization factors (CFs) that allows translating land use into relative impacts to wild pollinator abundance. The associated uncertainty of the CFs is presented along with an illustrative case to demonstrate the applicability in LCA studies. The CFs based on estimates that reached consensus during the Delphi assessment are recommended as readily applicable and allow key differences among land use types to be distinguished. The resulting CFs are proposed as the first step for incorporating pollinator impacts in LCA studies, exemplifying the use of expert elicitation methods as a useful tool to fill data gaps that constrain the characterization of key environmental impacts.
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| 3. |
- Cole, Lorna J., et al.
(författare)
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A critical analysis of the potential for EU Common Agricultural Policy measures to support wild pollinators on farmland
- 2020
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Ingår i: Journal of Applied Ecology. - : Wiley. - 0021-8901 .- 1365-2664. ; 57:4, s. 681-694
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Agricultural intensification and associated loss of high-quality habitats are key drivers of insect pollinator declines. With the aim of decreasing the environmental impact of agriculture, the 2014 EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) defined a set of habitat and landscape features (Ecological Focus Areas: EFAs) farmers could select from as a requirement to receive basic farm payments. To inform the post-2020 CAP, we performed a European-scale evaluation to determine how different EFA options vary in their potential to support insect pollinators under standard and pollinator-friendly management, as well as the extent of farmer uptake. A structured Delphi elicitation process engaged 22 experts from 18 European countries to evaluate EFAs options. By considering life cycle requirements of key pollinating taxa (i.e. bumble bees, solitary bees and hoverflies), each option was evaluated for its potential to provide forage, bee nesting sites and hoverfly larval resources. EFA options varied substantially in the resources they were perceived to provide and their effectiveness varied geographically and temporally. For example, field margins provide relatively good forage throughout the season in Southern and Eastern Europe but lacked early-season forage in Northern and Western Europe. Under standard management, no single EFA option achieved high scores across resource categories and a scarcity of late season forage was perceived. Experts identified substantial opportunities to improve habitat quality by adopting pollinator-friendly management. Improving management alone was, however, unlikely to ensure that all pollinator resource requirements were met. Our analyses suggest that a combination of poor management, differences in the inherent pollinator habitat quality and uptake bias towards catch crops and nitrogen-fixing crops severely limit the potential of EFAs to support pollinators in European agricultural landscapes. Policy Implications. To conserve pollinators and help protect pollination services, our expert elicitation highlights the need to create a variety of interconnected, well-managed habitats that complement each other in the resources they offer. To achieve this the Common Agricultural Policy post-2020 should take a holistic view to implementation that integrates the different delivery vehicles aimed at protecting biodiversity (e.g. enhanced conditionality, eco-schemes and agri-environment and climate measures). To improve habitat quality we recommend an effective monitoring framework with target-orientated indicators and to facilitate the spatial targeting of options collaboration between land managers should be incentivised.
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| 4. |
- Pretty, Jules, et al.
(författare)
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Global assessment of agricultural system redesign for sustainable intensification
- 2018
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Ingår i: Nature Sustainability. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 2398-9629. ; 1:8, s. 441-446
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The sustainable intensification of agricultural systems offers synergistic opportunities for the co-production of agricultural and natural capital outcomes. Efficiency and substitution are steps towards sustainable intensification, but system redesign is essential to deliver optimum outcomes as ecological and economic conditions change. We show global progress towards sustainable intensification by farms and hectares, using seven sustainable intensification sub-types: integrated pest management, conservation agriculture, integrated crop and biodiversity, pasture and forage, trees, irrigation management and small or patch systems. From 47 sustainable intensification initiatives at scale (each > 10(4) farms or hectares), we estimate 163 million farms (29% of all worldwide) have crossed a redesign threshold, practising forms of sustainable intensification on 453 Mha of agricultural land (9% of worldwide total). Key challenges include investment to integrate more forms of sustainable intensification in farming systems, creating agricultural knowledge economies and establishing policy measures to scale sustainable intensification further. We conclude that sustainable intensification may be approaching a tipping point where it could be transformative.
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| 5. |
- Amano, Tatsuya, et al.
(författare)
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Transforming Practice : Checklists for Delivering Change
- 2022
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Ingår i: Transforming Conservation : A Practical Guide to Evidence and Decision Making - A Practical Guide to Evidence and Decision Making. - 9781800648562 - 9781800648586 ; , s. 367-386
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Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Delivering a revolution in evidence use requires a cultural change across society. For a wide range of groups (practitioners, knowledge brokers, organisations, organisational leaders, policy makers, funders, researchers, journal publishers, the wider conservation community, educators, writers, and journalists), options are described to facilitate a change in practice, and a series of downloadable checklists is provided.
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| 6. |
- Carvalheiro, Luisa Gigante, et al.
(författare)
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The potential for indirect effects between co-flowering plants via shared pollinators depends on resource abundance, accessibility and relatedness
- 2014
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Ingår i: Ecology Letters. - : Wiley. - 1461-023X .- 1461-0248. ; 17:11, s. 1389-1399
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Co-flowering plant species commonly share flower visitors, and thus have the potential to influence each other's pollination. In this study we analysed 750 quantitative plant-pollinator networks from 28 studies representing diverse biomes worldwide. We show that the potential for one plant species to influence another indirectly via shared pollinators was greater for plants whose resources were more abundant (higher floral unit number and nectar sugar content) and more accessible. The potential indirect influence was also stronger between phylogenetically closer plant species and was independent of plant geographic origin (native vs. non-native). The positive effect of nectar sugar content and phylogenetic proximity was much more accentuated for bees than for other groups. Consequently, the impact of these factors depends on the pollination mode of plants, e.g. bee or fly pollinated. Our findings may help predict which plant species have the greatest importance in the functioning of plant-pollination networks.
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| 7. |
- Dicks, Lynn V., et al.
(författare)
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A Transparent Process for "Evidence-Informed" Policy Making
- 2014
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Ingår i: Conservation Letters. - : Wiley. - 1755-263X. ; 7:2, s. 119-125
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Political institutions are keen to use the best available scientific knowledge in decision-making. For environmental policy, relevant scientific evidence can be complex and extensive, so expert judgment is frequently relied upon, without clear links to the evidence itself. We propose a new transparent process for incorporating research evidence into policy decisions, involving independent synopsis of evidence relating to all possible policy options combined with expert evaluation of what the evidence means for specific policy questions. We illustrate the process using reforms of the European Union's Common Agricultural Policy currently being negotiated. Under the reform proposals, 30% of direct payments to farmers will become conditional upon three "compulsory greening measures." Independently, we compiled and evaluated experimental evidence for the effects of 85 interventions to protect wildlife on northern European farmland, 12 of which correspond to aspects of the compulsory greening measures. Our evaluation clearly indicates evidence of consistent wildlife benefits for some, but not all, of the greening measures. The process of evidence synopsis with expert evaluation has three advantages over existing efforts to incorporate evidence into policy decisions: it provides a clear evidence audit trail, allows rapid response to new policy contexts, and clarifies sources of uncertainty.
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| 8. |
- Dicks, Lynn V., et al.
(författare)
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Farmland Conservation : Evidence for the effects of interventions in northern and western Europe
- 2014
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Bok (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This synopsis covers evidence for the effects of conservation interventions for native farmland wildlife. It is restricted to evidence captured on the website www.conservationevidence.com. It includes papers published in the journal Conservation Evidence, evidence summarized on our database and systematic reviews collated by the Collaboration for Environmental Evidence. It is the thrid volume in the series Synopses of Conservation Evidence. Evidence was collected from all European countries west of Russia, but not those south of France, Switzerland, Austria, Hungary and Romania. A list of interventions to conserve wildlife on farmland was developed collaboratively by a team of thirteen experts. A number of interventions that are not currently agri-environment options were added during this process, such as 'Provide nest boxes for bees (solitary or bumblebees)' and 'Implement food labelling schemes relating to biodiversity-friendly farming'. Interventions relating to the creation or management of habitats not considered commercial farmland (such as lowland heath, salt marsh and farm woodland) were removed. The list of interventions was organized into categories based on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) classifications of direct threats and conservation actions. Interventions that fall under the threat category 'Agriculture' are grouped by farming system, with separate sections for interventions that apply to arable or livestock farms, or across all farming types.
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| 9. |
- Simmons, Benno I., et al.
(författare)
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Motifs in bipartite ecological networks: uncovering indirect interactions
- 2019
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Ingår i: Oikos. - : WILEY. - 0030-1299 .- 1600-0706. ; 128:2, s. 154-170
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Indirect interactions play an essential role in governing population, community and coevolutionary dynamics across a diverse range of ecological communities. Such communities are widely represented as bipartite networks: graphs depicting interactions between two groups of species, such as plants and pollinators or hosts and parasites. For over thirty years, studies have used indices, such as connectance and species degree, to characterise the structure of these networks and the roles of their constituent species. However, compressing a complex network into a single metric necessarily discards large amounts of information about indirect interactions. Given the large literature demonstrating the importance and ubiquity of indirect effects, many studies of network structure are likely missing a substantial piece of the ecological puzzle. Here we use the emerging concept of bipartite motifs to outline a new framework for bipartite networks that incorporates indirect interactions. While this framework is a significant departure from the current way of thinking about bipartite ecological networks, we show that this shift is supported by analyses of simulated and empirical data. We use simulations to show how consideration of indirect interactions can highlight differences missed by the current index paradigm that may be ecologically important. We extend this finding to empirical plant-pollinator communities, showing how two bee species, with similar direct interactions, differ in how specialised their competitors are. These examples underscore the need to not rely solely on network- and species-level indices for characterising the structure of bipartite ecological networks.
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| 10. |
- Sutcliffe, Laura M. E., et al.
(författare)
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Harnessing the biodiversity value of Central and Eastern European farmland
- 2015
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Ingår i: Diversity & distributions. - : Wiley. - 1366-9516 .- 1472-4642. ; 21:6, s. 722-730
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- A large proportion of European biodiversity today depends on habitat provided by low-intensity farming practices, yet this resource is declining as European agriculture intensifies. Within the European Union, particularly the central and eastern new member states have retained relatively large areas of species-rich farmland, but despite increased investment in nature conservation here in recent years, farmland biodiversity trends appear to be worsening. Although the high biodiversity value of Central and Eastern European farmland has long been reported, the amount of research in the international literature focused on farmland biodiversity in this region remains comparatively tiny, and measures within the EU Common Agricultural Policy are relatively poorly adapted to support it. In this opinion study, we argue that, 10years after the accession of the first eastern EU new member states, the continued under-representation of the low-intensity farmland in Central and Eastern Europe in the international literature and EU policy is impeding the development of sound, evidence-based conservation interventions. The biodiversity benefits for Europe of existing low-intensity farmland, particularly in the central and eastern states, should be harnessed before they are lost. Instead of waiting for species-rich farmland to further decline, targeted research and monitoring to create locally appropriate conservation strategies for these habitats is needed now.
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