Local and landscape effects on bee functional guilds in pigeon pea crops in Kenya

Pollinators face many challenges within agricultural systems due to landscape changes and intensification which can affect resource availability that can impact pollination services. This paper examines pigeon pea pollination and considers how landscape context and agricultural intensification in terms of pesticide use affects the abundance of bees characterized by species guilds on crops. The study was conducted on six paired farms across a gradient of habitat complexity based on the distance of each farm from adjacent semi-natural vegetation in Kibwezi Sub-county, Kenya. The study found that farms which do not use insecticides in farm management, but are in close proximity to natural habitat have greater bee guild abundance, but at further distances, overall abundance is reduced with or without insecticide use. At 1 km landscape radius, the complexity of habitats but not patch size had a positive impact on the abundance of cavity nesting bees and mason bees, which can be attributed to the interspersion of the small-holder farms with semi-natural habitats across the landscapes producing mosaics of heterogeneous habitats. The study revealed the strongest relationships between fruit set and bee abundance to be with the carpenter bee, social bee and solitary bee guilds, which are among the most abundant bees visiting pigeon pea flowers in this system. Our findings provide the foundation for conservation efforts by identifying which bee guilds pollinated pigeon peas. From this study, we suggest managing the floral and nesting resources that would best support the most abundant crop pollinators, and also reducing insecticide application to the crop

CropPol: a dynamic, open and global database on crop pollination

This is the final version. Available from Wiley via the DOI in this record The original dataset (v1.1.0) of the CropPol database can be accessed from the ECOLOGY repository. Main upgrades of these datasets will be versioned and deposited in Zenodo (DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.5546600)Data availability. V.C. Computer programs and data-processing algorithms: The algorithms used in deriving, processing, or transforming data can be accessed in the DataS1.zip file and the Zenodo repository (DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.5546600). V.D. Archiving: The data is archived for long-term storage and access in Zenodo (DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.5546600)Seventy five percent of the world's food crops benefit from insect pollination. Hence, there has been increased interest in how global change drivers impact this critical ecosystem service. Because standardized data on crop pollination are rarely available, we are limited in our capacity to understand the variation in pollination benefits to crop yield, as well as to anticipate changes in this service, develop predictions, and inform management actions. Here, we present CropPol, a dynamic, open and global database on crop pollination. It contains measurements recorded from 202 crop studies, covering 3,394 field observations, 2,552 yield measurements (i.e. berry weight, number of fruits and kg per hectare, among others), and 47,752 insect records from 48 commercial crops distributed around the globe. CropPol comprises 32 of the 87 leading global crops and commodities that are pollinator dependent. Malus domestica is the most represented crop (32 studies), followed by Brassica napus (22 studies), Vaccinium corymbosum (13 studies), and Citrullus lanatus (12 studies). The most abundant pollinator guilds recorded are honey bees (34.22% counts), bumblebees (19.19%), flies other than Syrphidae and Bombyliidae (13.18%), other wild bees (13.13%), beetles (10.97%), Syrphidae (4.87%), and Bombyliidae (0.05%). Locations comprise 34 countries distributed among Europe (76 studies), Northern America (60), Latin America and the Caribbean (29), Asia (20), Oceania (10), and Africa (7). Sampling spans three decades and is concentrated on 2001-05 (21 studies), 2006-10 (40), 2011-15 (88), and 2016-20 (50). This is the most comprehensive open global data set on measurements of crop flower visitors, crop pollinators and pollination to date, and we encourage researchers to add more datasets to this database in the future. This data set is released for non-commercial use only. Credits should be given to this paper (i.e., proper citation), and the products generated with this database should be shared under the same license terms (CC BY-NC-SA). This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.OBServ Projec

Special Edition: Environment in Sustainable Development

When we were invited by the editors of Sustainability to put together a special edition on “Environment in Sustainable Development” our first reaction was to question whether this was really needed. After all, the environment has long been regarded as a central plank in sustainability and there are countless articles and books published on an annual basis that explore the impact of our economic and social activities on our environment. Just what is it that a special edition can achieve? What new angles could we hope to provide? Our initial thinking was to link the special edition to a particular, almost unique, location in time rather than space. We are in the process of recovering, albeit stuttering, from the deepest economic crash experienced by the European and North American economies. The crash has brought some national economies to their knees and, if economic commentators are to be believed, almost destroyed the Euro. Recovery from that crash has been slow and it is arguable whether at the time of writing this has developed much momentum. There is still the skewed perception that prosperity equals economic growth and that economic growth can take place without real (sustainable) development or by simply implementing austerity measures and surely without people’s participation. An analogy from National Parks worldwide is when conservation agencies try to enforce protection without local people’s support. All such attempts have either failed or resurrected only once people’s involvement was secured and guaranteed. The unidirectional austerity measures imposed mainly in the countries of southern Europe have destroyed social cohesion leaving deeply wounded societies, while at the same time have also put up for grabs important assets (including natural capital) in each of these countries and therefore in jeopardy even their long term recovery

Nature protection in Greece: an appraisal of the factors shaping integrative conservation and policy effectiveness

The proliferation of designated areas following the implementation of Natura 2000 in Greece has initiated changes in the protected area design and conservation policy making aiming at delivering action for biodiversity and integrative planning on a wider landscape. Following the sustainability concept, an integrative approach cannot realistically take place simply by extending the protected area and designations. The paper addresses public involvement and inter-sectoral coordination as major procedural elements of integrative management and evaluates the nature and strength of their negative or positive influences on the fulfillment of an integrative vision of nature conservation. A review of the history of protected areas and administration developments in Greece provide useful input in the research. The analysis has shown that the selected network of Natura 2000 sites has been superimposed upon the existing system and resulted in duplication of administrative effort and related legislation. As a result the overall picture of protected areas in the country appears complex, confusing and fragmented. Major failures to integrated conservation perspective can be traced to structural causes rooted in politico-economic power structures of mainstream policy and in a rather limited political commitment to conservation. It is concluded that greater realisation. of integrated conservation in Greece necessitates policy reforms related mainly to sectoral legal frameworks to promote environmentalism as well as an increased effort by the managing authorities to facilitate a broader framework of public dialogue and give local communities incentives to sustainably benefit from protected areas. (C) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

A GIS-based empirical model for vegetation prediction in Lefka Ori, Crete

The aim of the study was to establish and verify a predictive vegetation model for plant community distribution in the alti-Mediterranean zone of the Lefka Ori massif, western Crete. Based on previous work three variables were identified as significant determinants of plant community distribution, namely altitude, slope angle and geomorphic landform. The response of four community types against these variables was tested using classification trees analysis in order to model community type occurrence. V-fold cross-validation plots were used to determine the length of the best fitting tree. The final 9node tree selected, classified correctly 92.5% of the samples. The results were used to provide decision rules for the construction of a spatial model for each community type. The model was implemented within a Geographical Information System (GIS) to predict the distribution of each community type in the study site. The evaluation of the model in the field using an error matrix gave an overall accuracy of 71%. The user's accuracy was higher for the Crepis-Cirsium (100%) and Telephium-Herniaria community type (66.7%) and relatively lower for the Peucedanum-Alyssum and Dianthus-Lomelosia community types (63.2% and 62.5%, respectively). Misclassification and field validation points to the need for improved geomorphological mapping and suggests the presence of transitional communities between existing community types

Changing perceptions in Mediterranean geography: the role of geospatial tools

Geography and Cartography have both their foundation in the Mediterranean. Recent advances in geospatial tools such as Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and Remote Sensing (RS) have radically changed the way that we look at Mediterranean geographies. The shift from mapping to map analysis marks a turning point in geography as a discipline. This chapter is a review of the role of geospatial tools in changing perceptions and geographies in the Mediterranean. The first section deals with the nature of GIS and remote sensing and their basic principles. The second part focuses on mapping environmental perception, as con-fined to three main aspects: reconstructing the past, documenting the present and predicting the future. Reconstruction of the past includes the use of visualization techniques which simulate past landscapes or the direct identification of palaeo-features through remote sensing techniques. On documenting the present we dis-cuss the ways that GIS-based cartography creates new spatial representations. Predicting the future includes a range of applications from modelling species and vegetation distribution under environmental change to simulating future land-scapes under different land-use scenarios. The chapter provides examples in the Mediterranean where the above techniques have been applied and discusses some of the challenges that the application of geospatial analysis in the Mediterranean might face in the future