Design and testing of a national pollinator and pollination monitoring framework

Final summary report to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), Scottish Government and Welsh Government: Project WC1101

Rapid assessment of insect pollination services to inform decision-making.

Pollinator declines have prompted efforts to assess how land-use change affects insect pollinators and pollination services in agricultural landscapes. Yet many tools to measure insect pollination services require substantial landscape-scale data and technical expertise. In expert workshops, 3 straightforward methods (desk-based method, field survey, and empirical manipulation with exclusion experiments) for rapid insect pollination assessment at site scale were developed to provide an adaptable framework that is accessible to nonspecialist with limited resources. These methods were designed for TESSA (Toolkit for Ecosystem Service Site-Based Assessment) and allow comparative assessment of pollination services at a site of conservation interest and in its most plausible alternative state (e.g., converted to agricultural land). We applied the methods at a nature reserve in the United Kingdom to estimate the value of insect pollination services provided by the reserve. The economic value of pollination services provided by the reserve ranged from US$6163 to US$11,546/year. The conversion of the reserve to arable land would provide no insect pollination services and a net annual benefit from insect-pollinated crop production of approximately $1542/year (US$24∙ha-1 ∙year-1 ). The methods had wide applicability and were readily adapted to different insect-pollinated crops: rape (Brassica napus) and beans (Vicia faba) crops. All methods were rapidly employed under a low budget. The relatively less robust methods that required fewer resources yielded higher estimates of annual insect pollination benefit

Stakeholder-driven transformative adaptation is needed for climate-smart nutrition security in sub-Saharan Africa.

Improving nutrition security in sub-Saharan Africa under increasing climate risks and population growth requires a strong and contextualized evidence base. Yet, to date, few studies have assessed climate-smart agriculture and nutrition security simultaneously. Here we use an integrated assessment framework (iFEED) to explore stakeholder-driven scenarios of food system transformation towards climate-smart nutrition security in Malawi, South Africa, Tanzania and Zambia. iFEED translates climate-food-emissions modelling into policy-relevant information using model output implication statements. Results show that diversifying agricultural production towards more micronutrient-rich foods is necessary to achieve an adequate population-level nutrient supply by mid-century. Agricultural areas must expand unless unprecedented rapid yield improvements are achieved. While these transformations are challenging to accomplish and often associated with increased greenhouse gas emissions, the alternative for a nutrition-secure future is to rely increasingly on imports, which would outsource emissions and be economically and politically challenging given the large import increases required. [Abstract copyright: © 2024. The Author(s).

A new integrated assessment framework for climate-smart nutrition security in sub-Saharan Africa : the integrated Future Estimator for Emissions and Diets (iFEED)

Funding statement This work was supported by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council through UK Research and Innovation as part of the Global Challenges Research Fund, AFRICAP programme, grant number BB/P027784/1.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Can large-scale patterns in insect atlas data predict local occupancy?

<p>Coarse-grain atlas data are economical to collect, but fine-grain data contain more detail about the distribution of species within occupied cells. This information can change our perception of species’ distribution size, rarity and risk of extinction. Species occupancy describes the proportion of grid cells where a focal species is present, but occupancy depends on the spatial grain (grid cell area) of the units used to record species presences. Downscaling models have been developed to describe and extrapolate the relationship between spatial grain and occupancy (the occupancy-area curve, OAR), but have not previously been tested for highly mobile organisms. Here, we use atlas data for 38 British Odonata species. This taxon is highly mobile and also aggregated in the landscape due to a dependence on freshwater bodies for reproduction. Occupancy data at five coarse grains ≥ 100 km2 were used to parameterise 10 downscaling models. Predictive accuracy of the models were compared, using predicted and observed occupancy at the 1, 4 and 25 km2 grains. The Hui model gave the most accurate downscaling predictions across 114 species:grain combinations and gave the best predictions for 15 of the 38 species. Species-level traits were able to explain nearly 60% of the variation in in downscaling predictive error. Species with widespread, localised-aggregated and localised- sparse distributions were better predicted than species with a climatic range limit in Britain. The fine-grain occupancy of species with good dispersal abilities were poorly predicted by downscaling. Habitat generalists and specialists were better predicted than species with intermediate habitat breadth. Our results suggest that downscaling models, using widely available and economical coarse-grain atlas data, can provide sensitive, fine-grain estimates of distribution size, rarity, abundance and range change, even for high mobile taxa with a strong spatial structure.  The code to obtain downscaling predictions for the Hui model is included as a pdf.</p

A new integrated assessment framework for climate-smart nutrition security in sub-Saharan Africa: the integrated Future Estimator for Emissions and Diets (iFEED)

Climate change will put millions more people in Africa at risk of food and nutrition insecurity by 2050. Integrated assessments of food systems tend to be limited by either heavy reliance on models or a lack of information on food and nutrition security. Accordingly, we developed a novel integrated assessment framework that combines models with in-country knowledge and expert academic judgement to explore climate-smart and nutrition-secure food system futures: the integrated Future Estimator for Emissions and Diets (iFEED). Here, we describe iFEED and present its application in Malawi, South Africa, Tanzania and Zambia. The iFEED process begins with a participatory scenario workshop. In-country stakeholders identify two key drivers of food system change, and from these, four possible scenarios are defined. These scenarios provide the underlying narratives of change to the food system. Integrated modelling of climate change, food production and greenhouse gas emissions is then used to explore nutrition security and climate-smart agriculture outcomes for each scenario. Model results are summarised using calibrated statements - quantitative statements of model outcomes and our confidence in them. These include statements about the way in which different trade futures interact with climate change and domestic production in determining nutrition security at the national level. To understand what the model results mean for food systems, the calibrated statements are expanded upon using implication statements. The implications rely on input from a wide range of academic experts – including agro-ecologists and social scientists. A series of workshops are used to incorporate in-country expertise, identifying any gaps in knowledge and summarising information for country-level recommendations. iFEED stakeholder champions help throughout by providing in-country expertise and disseminating knowledge to policy makers. iFEED has numerous novel aspects that can be used and developed in future work. It provides information to support evidence-based decisions for a climate-smart and nutrition-secure future. In particular, iFEED: i. employs novel and inclusive reporting of model results and associated in-country food system activities, with comprehensive reporting of uncertainty; ii. includes climate change mitigation alongside adaptation measures; and iii. quantifies future population-level nutrition security, as opposed to simply assessing future production and food security implications

A new integrated assessment framework for climate-smart nutrition security in sub-Saharan Africa: the integrated Future Estimator for Emissions and Diets (iFEED)

Climate change will put millions more people in Africa at risk of food and nutrition insecurity by 2050. Integrated assessments of food systems tend to be limited by either heavy reliance on models or a lack of information on food and nutrition security. Accordingly, we developed a novel integrated assessment framework that combines models with in-country knowledge and expert academic judgement to explore climate-smart and nutrition-secure food system futures: the integrated Future Estimator for Emissions and Diets (iFEED). Here, we describe iFEED and present its application in Malawi, South Africa, Tanzania and Zambia. The iFEED process begins with a participatory scenario workshop. In-country stakeholders identify two key drivers of food system change, and from these, four possible scenarios are defined. These scenarios provide the underlying narratives of change to the food system. Integrated modeling of climate change, food production and greenhouse gas emissions is then used to explore nutrition security and climate-smart agriculture outcomes for each scenario. Model results are summarized using calibrated statements—quantitative statements of model outcomes and our confidence in them. These include statements about the way in which different trade futures interact with climate change and domestic production in determining nutrition security at the national level. To understand what the model results mean for food systems, the calibrated statements are expanded upon using implication statements. The implications rely on input from a wide range of academic experts—including agro-ecologists and social scientists. A series of workshops are used to incorporate in-country expertise, identifying any gaps in knowledge and summarizing information for country-level recommendations. iFEED stakeholder champions help throughout by providing in-country expertise and disseminating knowledge to policy makers. iFEED has numerous novel aspects that can be used and developed in future work. It provides information to support evidence-based decisions for a climate-smart and nutrition-secure future. In particular, iFEED: (i) employs novel and inclusive reporting of model results and associated in-country food system activities, with comprehensive reporting of uncertainty; (ii) includes climate change mitigation alongside adaptation measures; and (iii) quantifies future population-level nutrition security, as opposed to simply assessing future production and food security implication