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

森林牧场描述了在以树木为主的农场栖息地内生产牲畜的系统。这一做法使牲畜受益于改善的住所和多样化的食物，并在增加碳储存、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。随着植物和动物群落的变化，开放到封闭的林地栖息地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。该项目将侧重于森林牧场和相关生态系统服务的生物多样性效益，重点是屎壳郎和蝙蝠。屎壳郎有助于快速分解牲畜粪便；减少牲畜病虫害，改善土壤健康和生产力。蝙蝠是食虫动物，对防治害虫很有价值，通常被用作生物多样性指示物种。在不同的森林放牧制度下，演替进入封闭林地生境对这两个关键类群的影响目前尚不清楚。农场的生物多样性也具有经济价值。然而，生物多样性补偿、农产品营销和农业环境计划的结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。开发具有成本效益的方法来衡量森林牧场的生物多样性，将使农民能够自己跟踪一段时间内的变化，而不依赖外部援助。本项目旨在监测森林放牧系统建立期间的功能性生物多样性，开发连续多年农民自我监测的自动化方法，并利用监测数据提高农业生产力和社会效益。监测将在几个森林牧场的网络上进行，实行三种不同的树木系统。对于屎壳郎，将开发和优化摄像机捕获方法，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识别在森林牧场活动的物种和物候。这将包括利用基于网络的工具向农民提供反馈，使所记录物种的结果可视化。该项目将展示农民提供关于功能性生物多样性的有用信息的潜力，同时增加经济价值，并允许对生产性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，并为有效和富有成效的系统提供建议。增加的确定性将给农民带来信心，并增加对森林放牧的采用。这最终将有助于英国实现农业净零排放和阻止生物多样性丧失的承诺。

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.