| 1. |
- Hiron, Matthew, et al.
(författare)
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Crop damage by granivorous birds despite protection efforts by human bird scarers in a sorghum field in western Kenya
- 2014
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Ingår i: Ostrich: Journal of African Ornithology. - : National Inquiry Services Center (NISC). - 0030-6525. ; 85, s. 153-159
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Cereal crop damage from granivorous birds poses a serious food security problem for subsistence farmers in sub-Saharan Africa. In this region, farmers may rely on human 'bird scarers' to limit crop damage. Here we report feeding behaviour and crop damage patterns caused by Village Weavers Ploceus cucullatus and African Mourning Doves Streptopelia decipiens during four days in a 0.12 ha sorghum field protected by two full-time bird scarers in western Kenya. Despite the scarers' efforts, almost 60% of the seed was lost before harvest. Bird abundance was largely determined by the presence of the bird scarers, with seed loss patterns being a function of distance from these people. Throughout the day, an average of 18 weavers (maximum 120) was present on the crop in any five-minute period. The number of mud projectiles thrown at the birds per 15 min showed only minor diurnal fluctuations, further suggesting that seed eaters attacked the crop throughout the day. Village Weaver individuals took an average 16 seeds per visit, whereas dove individuals took 32 seeds (maximum 105 and 455, respectively). Our study illustrates that avian crop pests can be extremely persistent and, even with consistent diurnal bird scaring activity, severely damage a small crop field. Bird scarers need to be active throughout daylight hours and patrol both the centres and edges of fields to create maximum disturbance to foraging seed eating birds. Further research is needed in order to investigate effects of local-and landscape-level land use patterns on the feeding behaviour of crop pests and the effectiveness of crop protection measures.
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| 2. |
- Josefsson, Jonas, et al.
(författare)
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Improving scientific rigour in conservation evaluations and a plea deal for transparency on potential biases
- 2020
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Ingår i: Conservation Letters. - : Wiley. - 1755-263X. ; 13:5
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Forskningsöversikt (refereegranskat)abstract
- The delivery of rigorous and unbiased evidence on the effects of interventions lay at the heart of the scientific method. Here we examine scientific papers evaluating agri-environment schemes, the principal instrument to mitigate farmland biodiversity declines worldwide. Despite previous warnings about rudimentary study designs in this field, we found that the majority of studies published between 2008 and 2017 still lack robust study designs to strictly evaluate intervention effects. Potential sources of bias that arise from the correlative nature are rarely mentioned, and results are still promoted by using a causal language. This lack of robust study designs likely results from poor integration of research and policy, while the erroneous use of causal language and an unwillingness to discuss bias may stem from publication pressures. We conclude that scientific reporting and discussion of study limitations in intervention research must improve and propose some practices toward this goal.
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| 3. |
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| 4. |
- Rosin, Zuzanna, et al.
(författare)
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Village modernization may contribute more to farmland bird declines than agricultural intensification
- 2021
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Ingår i: Conservation Letters. - : Wiley. - 1755-263X. ; 14
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The central tenet of European farmland ecology is that agricultural intensification during the 20th century was largely responsible for dramatic declines in species abundances. However, during this time, human rural settlements were also undergoing radical changes through modernization, with undocumented biodiversity impacts in this important wildlife habitat. We performed the first ever large-scale study to disentangle the impact of these simultaneous processes on farmland bird diversity in 104 Polish villages. We show that modernized villages and their surrounding agricultural fields had 50-60% fewer birds than those in and around comparable older villages. The relative contribution of modernization versus agricultural intensification to predicted bird declines was 88% versus 12% for bird communities in villages and 56% versus 44% in surrounding croplands, with considerable variation among ecological species subgroups. These results challenge our current understanding of agricultural ecosystem ecology and how best to implement conservation measures costing billions of euros annually.
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| 5. |
- Aguilera Nuñez, Guillermo, et al.
(författare)
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Agriculturally Improved and Semi-Natural Permanent Grasslands Provide Complementary Ecosystem Services in Swedish Boreal Landscapes
- 2024
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Ingår i: Agronomy. - 2073-4395. ; 14
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Permanent grasslands cover more than a third of European agricultural land and are important for a number of ecosystem services. Permanent grasslands used for agriculture are broadly separated into agriculturally improved and semi-natural grasslands. High cultural and natural values linked to semi-natural grasslands are well documented. However, in boreal and hemi-boreal agricultural landscapes, less information is available about the areal coverage of improved permanent grasslands and their role for ecosystem service provision and biodiversity. In Sweden, grasslands are administratively separated into semi-natural (i.e., land that cannot be ploughed) or arable (i.e., improved temporary or permanent grassland on land that can be ploughed). We used data from a large-scale environmental monitoring program to show that improved permanent grassland (i.e., permanent grasslands on arable fields) may be a previously unrecognised large area of the agricultural land use in Sweden. We show that improved permanent grasslands together with semi-natural grasslands are both comparable but also complementary providers of a range of ecosystem services (plant species richness, plant resources for pollinators and forage amount for livestock production). However, as expected, semi-natural grasslands with the highest-level AESs (special values) show high species richness values for vascular plants, plants indicating traditional semi-natural management conditions and red-listed species. Improved permanent grasslands on arable fields are likely an underestimated but integral part of the agricultural economy and ecological function in boreal landscapes that together with high nature value semi-natural grasslands provide a broad range of ecosystem services.
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| 6. |
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| 7. |
- Berg, Åke, et al.
(författare)
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Assessing agri-environmental schemes for semi-natural grasslands during a 5-year period: can we see positive effects for vascular plants and pollinators?
- 2019
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Ingår i: Biodiversity and Conservation. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 0960-3115 .- 1572-9710. ; 28, s. 3989-4005
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- An important function of agri-environmental schemes (AES) is to change management of pastures to better conserve biodiversity. However, the effects of most AES on biodiversity are poorly understood, especially when it comes to effects of AES management over time. The main aim of this study is to investigate if the species richness and abundance of grassland specialists of vascular plants and two important insect pollinator groups (bumblebees and butterflies) differ over time (5 years) in pastures with AES management (two value levels; general values and special values) and pastures without AES management. We also investigate if local vegetation characteristics and landscape composition relate to species richness in semi-natural grasslands. Using data from more than 400 sites we found that species richness of vascular plants (grassland specialists) was higher in pastures with AES management (for special and general values) compared to those without AES, which implies that these schemes do have value of the conservation of plant diversity. However, species richness and abundance of butterflies (grassland specialists) and bumblebees (all species) did not differ significantly among the three AES categories. We found no evidence that the type of AES management caused any changes in species richness of plants, butterflies or bumblebees during the 5 year period of our investigation. It appears that AES management that encourages uniform and minimum levels of grazing can have both positive and negative effects on biodiversity. For example, pollinators may benefit from a lower grazing intensity that could increase flower richness and heterogeneity in vegetation height. However, low grazing intensity may lead to increased cover of trees and shrubs, which can have negative effects for both insect pollinators and vascular plants. The effects of landscape composition were weak and only species richness of bumble bees were associated with landscape composition. Designing management regimes to maintain suitably heterogeneous vegetation layer, and continued long-term monitoring of biodiversity will be critical for safeguarding culturally and functionally important semi-natural grasslands.
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| 8. |
- Berg, Åke, et al.
(författare)
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Linking occurrence and changes in local abundance of farmland bird species to landscape composition and land-use changes
- 2015
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Ingår i: Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment. - : Elsevier BV. - 0167-8809 .- 1873-2305. ; 204, s. 1-7
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Changes in agricultural policies have caused dramatic changes in land-use in agricultural landscapes. To investigate whether such changes in land-use relate to temporal changes in bird communities a repeated inventory (1994 and 2004) of farmland birds was made in 212 point-count sites in south-central Sweden.Distinct changes in abundance of several species over the study period were recorded, abundance of the 16 studied species decreased by 23%. The decline was significant for eight species, while two species increased significantly. Persistence and colonisation models suggested similar species-habitat relationships as the snapshot models, i.e. eight of the 12 associations were in line with what could be expected from the snapshot models. Occurrence of nine species was linked to land-use whereas six species displayed links between changes in occurrence and changes in land-use. In line with previous studies positive effects of short rotation coppice and negative effects of autumn-sown crops were found, while set-asides showed fewer effects than expected. In the snapshot models several species showed links to landscape characteristics such as amount of forest (negative for five species) and landscape heterogeneity (positive for six species). The evidence for effects of the landscape variables on persistence/colonisation was more restricted.The results suggest that both land-use changes and the landscape setting may cause local changes in abundance of farmland birds, even for species displaying a general decline in numbers between years, the effects of land-use changes being, however, strongly species specific. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
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| 9. |
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| 10. |
- Eggers, Sönke, et al.
(författare)
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Do biodiversity-ecosystem functioning experiments inform stakeholders how to simultaneously conserve biodiversity and increase ecosystem service provisioning in grasslands?
- 2020
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Ingår i: Biological Conservation. - : Elsevier BV. - 0006-3207 .- 1873-2917. ; 245
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Two key stakeholders primarily important for nature conservation are farmers (and their lobby groups) and conservationists. Both have substantial inputs into environmental strategies and policies calling for biodiversity conservation aimed to directly increase ecosystem services. The scientific literature concurs that as biological diversity increases so do ecosystem functions and services in grasslands. While the evidence for this is strong, the majority comes from controlled small-scale biodiversity-ecosystem functioning (BEF) experiments. Thus, it is unclear whether the scientific basis for implementing BEF relationships into practice is sufficiently evidenced. Here we explore the applicability of findings from BEF experiments to the conservation and management of temperate grassland, a widespread and potentially highly biodiverse habitat. While we acknowledge that BEF research can reveal insights into fundamental mechanisms, the saturation of biodiversity effects at low levels and unrealistic (management) treatments widely impede the applicability of these experimental results to permanent grasslands. Additionally, the integration of BEF research results into practice is considerably hampered by experimental studies not answering stakeholders' crucial questions, e.g. is there evidence of biodiversity conservation potentials? Thus, stakeholders do not have a strong evidence base for taking decisions for the addressed management goals, except intensive production in (species-poor) temporary grasslands. If BEF work is to inform stakeholders future research needs to overcome unrealistic management, missing stakeholder involvement and ineffective communication. A new generation of applied BEF experiments employing applied, multi-actor approaches is needed to facilitate the relevance of BEF research for nature conservation, agriculture and land management.
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