Silvopasture Biodiversity - Beetles and Bats: Methods for farmers to measure the impacts of silvopasture systems on functional biodiversity

森林牧场生物多样性 - 甲虫和蝙蝠：农民衡量森林牧场系统对功能性生物多样性影响的方法

• 批准号: 10053160
• 金额: $ 6.15万
• 依托单位: ELSTON FARM PARTNERSHIP
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Collaborative R&D
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2023 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=10053160
• 关键词: Silvopasture; Biodiversity; Beetles; Bats; Methods

Silvopasture describes productive livestock systems within tree dominated farm habitats. This practice benefits livestock in improved shelter and diverse browsing, with wider environmental benefits in increased carbon storage, soil health, water regulation, and biodiversity. There is still uncertainty over how the succession of open to closed woodland habitats, which follows a progression of floral and faunal community change, affects beneficial biodiversity-- and the concurrent management needs from farmers to optimise benefits.This project will focus on the biodiversity benefits of silvopasture and associated ecosystem services, with emphasis on dung beetles and bats. Dung beetles help to break down livestock dung quickly; reducing incidence of livestock pests, and improving soil health and productivity. Bats are insectivores, valuable for pest control, and commonly used as biodiversity indicator species. The effect of succession into closed woodland habitats, under different silvopasture systems is currently unknown for both of these key groups.Biodiversity on farms also has an economic value. However, biodiversity offsetting, marketing of produce, and outcome measurement for agri-environment schemes, will require effective measurement of biodiversity on farms. Farmers currently lack the knowledge, time, and equipment to effectively monitor functional biodiversity. Development of cost-effective methods to measure biodiversity in the context of silvopasture will enable farmers to track changes over time themselves, without reliance on outside assistance.This project aims to monitor the functional biodiversity in silvopasture systems during establishment, develop automated methods for farmer self-monitoring during successive years, and exploit use of monitoring data for farm productivity and societal gain.Monitoring will be carried out on a network of several silvopasture farms, practising three different tree systems. For dung beetles, camera trapping methods will be developed and optimised, producing a standardized protocol practicable by farmers, to gather images suitable for automatic identification to species. For bats, acoustic sensors will be used to identify the species and phenology of activity in the silvopasture sites. This will include feedback to farmers with web-based tools for visualising results for the species recorded.This project will demonstrate the potential of farmers to provide useful information on functional biodiversity, while adding economic value, and allowing adaptive management towards productive and sustainable systems. Data produced will build the knowledge base, and feed into recommendations for effective and productive systems. The increased certainty will give farmers confidence and increase adoption of silvopasture. This will ultimately contribute to the UK's commitments towards net zero agriculture and halting biodiversity loss.

Silvopasture描述了树木为主的农场栖息地内的生产性畜牧系统。这种做法有利于牲畜改善住房和多样化浏览，在增加碳储存，土壤健康，水调节和生物多样性方面具有更广泛的环境效益。在植物和动物群落变化的过程中，开放的林地生境向封闭的林地生境的演替如何影响有益的生物多样性，以及农民为优化效益而同时进行的管理需求，仍然存在不确定性，本项目将侧重于森林植被的生物多样性效益和相关的生态系统服务，重点是蜣螂和蝙蝠。蜣螂有助于快速分解牲畜粪便，减少牲畜害虫的发生，改善土壤健康和生产力。蝙蝠是食虫动物，对害虫防治很有价值，通常被用作生物多样性指示物种。在不同的造林系统下，对这两个关键群体来说，进入封闭林地生境的影响目前还不清楚。农场的生物多样性也有经济价值。然而，生物多样性抵消、农产品营销和农业环境计划的成果衡量将需要对农场的生物多样性进行有效衡量。农民目前缺乏有效监测功能性生物多样性的知识、时间和设备。制定成本效益高的方法来衡量生物多样性的范围内的森林保护将使农民能够跟踪自己的变化随着时间的推移，而不依赖外部援助，该项目的目的是监测功能的生物多样性的森林保护系统在建立期间，开发自动化的方法，农民自我监测连续几年，并利用监测数据提高农场生产力和社会效益。监测将在几个造林农场的网络上进行，采用三种不同的树木系统。对于蜣螂，将开发和优化相机捕捉方法，制定农民可行的标准化协议，以收集适合自动识别物种的图像。对于蝙蝠，声学传感器将被用来确定物种和物候活动的森林公园网站。该项目将展示农民提供功能性生物多样性有用信息的潜力，同时增加经济价值，并允许对生产和可持续系统进行适应性管理。所产生的数据将建立知识库，并为建立有效和富有成效的系统提供建议。增加的确定性将给农民信心，并增加采用森林植物。这将最终有助于英国实现净零农业和阻止生物多样性丧失的承诺。