Volume 128, August 2016, Pages 1–7
Abstract
Crop
pollination by bees has long been recognized as an ecosystem service of
huge economic value; a large number of food crops depend upon
pollination. Features across landscapes that are important for
pollination delivery include: nesting habitats, floral resource
availability at foraging distance, and climate. The conditions for
presence/absence of pollinators are therefore complex and rely upon a
combination of biotic and abiotic factors. To date there has been no
easily available method for landowners to determine the potential of
pollination delivery across the land effectively and rapidly. In this
paper we develop a method that uses freely available datasets to
remotely estimate the relative provision of pollination service delivery
provided by bees across Europe at a 300 m-pixel resolution. We then
identify the potential pollination delivery and efficiency across Europe
at country and regional level. This study illustrates an approach that
obtains a first approximation for land managers to identify potential
areas across landscapes to protect in order to enhance pollination
service delivery.
Keywords
- Ecosystem services;
- Pollination;
- Landscape management;
- Pollinator-dependent crops;
- Species distribution modeling
© 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
