Modelling Landscapes for Resilient Pollination Services in the UK

蜜蜂和食蚜蝇等野生昆虫的授粉服务每年可使英国农作物总产量增加数亿英镑。气候和土地使用的变化可能导致这些野生昆虫的数量下降，并可能使某些物种从其自然范围内消失。因此，一个群落提供的授粉服务可能会减少，或变得非常依赖于少数几个关键物种。这大大增加了授粉媒介的进一步损失对农民、供应商、零售商和消费者构成的经济风险，无论是突然的一次性冲击，还是长期压力的逐步影响。影响传粉者种群的景观变化也会影响景观对不同人的美学和文化价值，可能使他们或多或少地愿意采取措施支持传粉者，如种植野花带。目前，各种景观和气候变化对传粉者种群及其提供的传粉服务的确切影响仍不清楚。该项目涉及一个由生态学家、经济学家和社会学家组成的团队，以其他几项研究收集的数据为基础，衡量和绘制传粉服务的现有可用性，包括其经济效益，以及它们对未来物理或经济环境可能发生的变化的适应能力。该项目分为四个工作包：工作包1将开发新的方法，根据现有数据绘制英国各地的传粉者种群，并估计这些传粉者种群的经济价值。工作包2将利用现有数据和少量新数据，研究英国四种主要作物（苹果、草莓、油菜和菜豆）的传粉者访问与经济产出之间的联系，并确定服务不足的关键临界点。第三套工作将采用创新的社会科学技术，研究影响传粉媒介的景观变化如何影响不同人对这些景观的文化价值。最后，第四套工作方案将与利益攸关方（如农民、政策制定者、零售商）合作，制定一系列现实和相关的未来情景，每一种情景都考虑到以下方面的变化：（一）气候;（二）不同作物的市场（影响种植量）;（三）更广泛的土地利用。结合所有工作包的信息，该项目将研究这些不断变化的条件将如何影响传粉者种群，它们提供的传粉服务的经济效益以及影响传粉者的景观变化对社会价值的影响。然后，该项目将审查在每种情况下，授粉者种群在突发事件（如极端天气）后恢复其提供服务潜力的能力，以及作物市场对国外授粉作物产量下降的脆弱性。在整个过程中，该项目将得到利益相关者指导委员会的支持，该委员会将与项目团队合作，以确保成果最切合实际，与英国食品系统相关。该项目的成果，包括在当前和未来条件下英国各地授粉者种群和授粉服务的详细地图以及关于人们景观偏好的新信息，将用于制作新的宣传材料（与专业艺术家合作），政策简报和为广泛的利益攸关方举办的讨论会。

Pollination services by wild insects, such as bees and hoverflies, can increase the total output of UK crop production by hundreds of millions of pounds annually. Changes in climate and land use can cause populations of these wild insects to decline and can displace certain species from their natural range. As a result, the pollination services provided by a community may decline or become very reliant upon a few key species. This greatly increases the economic risk posed to farmers, suppliers, retailers and consumers by further losses of pollinators, either as sudden, one time shocks or through the gradual impacts of pressures over a longer period. Changes to the landscape that affect pollinator populations will also affect the aesthetic and cultural value of the landscape for different people, potentially making them more or less willing to undertake measures to support pollinators, such as planting wildflower strips. At present, the exact impacts of various landscape and climate changes on pollinator populations and the pollination services they provide remains unknown.This project, involving a team of ecologists, economists and sociologists, builds on data collected from several other studies to measure and map the current availability of pollination services, including their economic benefits, across the UK and how resilient they are to plausible future changes in the physical or economic environment. The project is divided into four work packages: work package 1 will develop new methods to map pollinator populations across the UK, based on existing data and estimate the economic value of these pollinator populations. work package 2 will use existing data, and a small amount of new data, to examine the links between pollinator visits and economic output in four major UK crops (apples, strawberries, oilseed rape and field beans), and identify the key tipping points where services will be inadequate. work package 3 will use innovative social science techniques to examine how changes in the landscape that affect pollinators will impact upon different people's cultural values for those landscapes. Finally, work package 4 will work with stakeholders (e.g. farmers, policy makers, retailers) to develop a series of realistic and relevant future scenarios that each consider changes in: i) the climate; ii) markets for different crops (which affects how much is planted); and, iii) wider land use. Combining information from all of the work packages, the project will examine how these changing conditions will affect pollinator populations, the economic benefits of the pollination services they provide and the impacts that changes in the landscape affecting pollinators will have on social values. The project will then examine the capacity of pollinator populations to recover their service providing potential after sudden events (e.g. extreme weather) under each scenario, as well as the vulnerability of crop markets to declines in pollinated crop production abroad. Throughout, the project will be supported by a steering committee of stakeholders who will work with the project team to ensure the outcomes are the most realistic and relevant to UK food systems. The projects outcomes, including detailed maps of pollinator populations and pollination services across the UK under current and future conditions and new information on people's landscape preferences, will be used to produce new outreach materials (in collaboration with a specialist artist), policy briefs and discussion workshops for a wide range of stakeholders.