Species distribution models for crop pollination: a modelling framework applied to Great Britain

Insect pollination benefits over three quarters of the world\u27s major crops. There is growing concern that observed declines in pollinators may impact on production and revenues from animal pollinated crops. Knowing the distribution of pollinators is therefore crucial for estimating their availability to pollinate crops; however, in general, we have an incomplete knowledge of where these pollinators occur. We propose a method to predict geographical patterns of pollination service to crops, novel in two elements: the use of pollinator records rather than expert knowledge to predict pollinator occurrence, and the inclusion of the managed pollinator supply. We integrated a maximum entropy species distribution model (SDM) with an existing pollination service model (PSM) to derive the availability of pollinators for crop pollination. We used nation-wide records of wild and managed pollinators (honey bees) as well as agricultural data from Great Britain. We first calibrated the SDM on a representative sample of bee and hoverfly crop pollinator species, evaluating the effects of different settings on model performance and on its capacity to identify the most important predictors. The importance of the different predictors was better resolved by SDM derived from simpler functions, with consistent results for bees and hoverflies. We then used the species distributions from the calibrated model to predict pollination service of wild and managed pollinators, using field beans as a test case. The PSM allowed us to spatially characterize the contribution of wild and managed pollinators and also identify areas potentially vulnerable to low pollination service provision, which can help direct local scale interventions. This approach can be extended to investigate geographical mismatches between crop pollination demand and the availability of pollinators, resulting from environmental change or policy scenarios

Whose values count? A review of the nature valuation studies with a focus on justice

The Values Assessment of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services shows that multiple valuation methods and approaches exist to assess diverse value types. The evidence is based on the largest review of academic valuation studies on nature to date, developed for the Values Assessment of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). We evaluate studies according to environmental justice criteria. The results suggest that although diverse value types and indicators are assessed across studies, few individual studies are plural, and studies fail to provide evidence on distributive justice and score low on procedural justice indicators. We provide a set of recommendations for incorporating issues of justice in the design of valuation studies

The role of biotic interactions in shaping distributions and realised assemblages of species: implications for species distribution modelling.

Predicting which species will occur together in the future, and where, remains one of the greatest challenges in ecology, and requires a sound understanding of how the abiotic and biotic environments interact with dispersal processes and history across scales. Biotic interactions and their dynamics influence species' relationships to climate, and this also has important implications for predicting future distributions of species. It is already well accepted that biotic interactions shape species' spatial distributions at local spatial extents, but the role of these interactions beyond local extents (e.g. 10 km(2) to global extents) are usually dismissed as unimportant. In this review we consolidate evidence for how biotic interactions shape species distributions beyond local extents and review methods for integrating biotic interactions into species distribution modelling tools. Drawing upon evidence from contemporary and palaeoecological studies of individual species ranges, functional groups, and species richness patterns, we show that biotic interactions have clearly left their mark on species distributions and realised assemblages of species across all spatial extents. We demonstrate this with examples from within and across trophic groups. A range of species distribution modelling tools is available to quantify species environmental relationships and predict species occurrence, such as: (i) integrating pairwise dependencies, (ii) using integrative predictors, and (iii) hybridising species distribution models (SDMs) with dynamic models. These methods have typically only been applied to interacting pairs of species at a single time, require a priori ecological knowledge about which species interact, and due to data paucity must assume that biotic interactions are constant in space and time. To better inform the future development of these models across spatial scales, we call for accelerated collection of spatially and temporally explicit species data. Ideally, these data should be sampled to reflect variation in the underlying environment across large spatial extents, and at fine spatial resolution. Simplified ecosystems where there are relatively few interacting species and sometimes a wealth of existing ecosystem monitoring data (e.g. arctic, alpine or island habitats) offer settings where the development of modelling tools that account for biotic interactions may be less difficult than elsewhere

Whose values count? A review of the nature valuation studies with a focus on justice

Data Availability: All data on which this perspective is based are available in the IPBES methodological assessment on diverse values and valuation of nature.Copyright © 2023 The Authors. The Values Assessment of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services shows that multiple valuation methods and approaches exist to assess diverse value types. The evidence is based on the largest review of academic valuation studies on nature to date, developed for the Values Assessment of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). We evaluate studies according to environmental justice criteria. The results suggest that although diverse value types and indicators are assessed across studies, few individual studies are plural, and studies fail to provide evidence on distributive justice and score low on procedural justice indicators. We provide a set of recommendations for incorporating issues of justice in the design of valuation studies

Anticipating and Managing Future Trade-offs and Complementarities between Ecosystem Services

This paper shows how, with the aid of computer models developed in close collaboration with decision makers and other stakeholders, it is possible to quantify and map how policy decisions are likely to affect multiple ecosystem services in future. In this way, potential trade-offs and complementarities between different ecosystem services can be identified, so that policies can be designed to avoid the worst trade-offs, and where possible, enhance multiple services. The paper brings together evidence from across the Rural Economy and Land Use Programme’s Sustainable Uplands project for the first time, with previously unpublished model outputs relating to runoff, agricultural suitability, biomass, heather cover, age, and utility for Red Grouse (Lagopus scotica), grass cover, and accompanying scenario narratives and video. Two contrasting scenarios, based on policies to extensify or intensify land management up to 2030, were developed through a combination of interviews and discussions during site visits with stakeholders, literature review, conceptual modeling, and process-based computer models, using the Dark Peak of the Peak District National Park in the UK as a case study. Where extensification leads to a significant reduction in managed burning and grazing or land abandonment, changes in vegetation type and structure could compromise a range of species that are important for conservation, while compromising provisioning services, amenity value, and increasing wildfire risk. However, where extensification leads to the restoration of peatlands damaged by former intensive management, there would be an increase in carbon sequestration and storage, with a number of cobenefits, which could counter the loss of habitats and species elsewhere in the landscape. In the second scenario, land use and management was significantly intensified to boost UK self-sufficiency in food. This would benefit certain provisioning services but would have negative consequences for carbon storage and water quality and would lead to a reduction in the abundance of certain species of conservation concern. The paper emphasizes the need for spatially explicit models that can track how ecosystem services might change over time, in response to policy or environmental drivers, and in response to the changing demands and preferences of society, which are far harder to anticipate. By developing such models in close collaboration with decision makers and other stakeholders, it is possible to depict scenarios of real concern to those who need to use the research findings. By engaging these collaborators with the research findings through film, it was possible to discuss adaptive options to minimize trade-offs and enhance the provision of multiple ecosystem services under the very different future conditions depicted by each scenario. By preparing for as wide a range of futures as possible in this way, it may be possible for decision makers to act rapidly and effectively to protect and enhance the provision of ecosystem services in the face of unpredictable future change.Additional co-authors: Nanlin Jin, Brian J Irvine, Mike J Kirkby, William E Kunin, Christina Prell, Claire H Quinn, Bill Slee, Sigrid Stagl, Mette Termansen, Simon Thorp, and Fred Worral

(Dis) integrated valuation - Assessing the information gaps in ecosystem service appraisals for governance support

The operational challenges of integrated ecosystem service (ES) appraisals are determined by study purpose, system complexity and uncertainty, decision-makers' requirements for reliability and accuracy of methods, and approaches to stakeholder-science interaction in different decision contexts. To explore these factors we defined an information gap hypothesis, based on a theory of cumulative uncertainty in ES appraisals. When decision context requirements for accuracy and reliability increase, and the expected uncertainty of the ES appraisal methods also increases, the likelihood of methods being used is expected to drop, creating a potential information gap in governance. In order to test this information gap hypothesis, we evaluate 26 case studies and 80 ecosystem services appraisals in a large integrated EU research project. We find some support for a decreasing likelihood of ES appraisal methods coinciding with increasing accuracy and reliability requirements of the decision-support context, and with increasing uncertainty. We do not find that information costs are the explanation for this information gap, but rather that the research project interacted mostly with stakeholders outside the most decision-relevant contexts. The paper discusses how alternative definitions of integrated valuation can lead to different interpretations of decision-support information, and different governance approaches to dealing with uncertainty. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Peer reviewe

Networking Our Way to Better Ecosystem Service Provision.

The ecosystem services (EcoS) concept is being used increasingly to attach values to natural systems and the multiple benefits they provide to human societies. Ecosystem processes or functions only become EcoS if they are shown to have social and/or economic value. This should assure an explicit connection between the natural and social sciences, but EcoS approaches have been criticized for retaining little natural science. Preserving the natural, ecological science context within EcoS research is challenging because the multiple disciplines involved have very different traditions and vocabularies (common-language challenge) and span many organizational levels and temporal and spatial scales (scale challenge) that define the relevant interacting entities (interaction challenge). We propose a network-based approach to transcend these discipline challenges and place the natural science context at the heart of EcoS research.The QUINTESSENCE Consortium gratefully acknowledges the support of Départment SPE and Métaprogramme ECOSERV of INRA, and the French ANR projects PEERLESS (ANR-12-AGRO-0006) and AgroBioSE (ANR-13-AGRO-0001).This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from Elsevier via http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2015.12.00

Integrated assessment and valuation of ecosystem services - Guidelines and experiences

EU FP7 OpenNESS project deliverable D33 & D4

Diverse values of nature for sustainability

Twenty-five years since foundational publications on valuing ecosystem services for human well-being(1,2), addressing the global biodiversity crisis(3) still implies confronting barriers to incorporating nature's diverse values into decision-making. These barriers include powerful interests supported by current norms and legal rules such as property rights, which determine whose values and which values of nature are acted on. A better understanding of how and why nature is (under)valued is more urgent than ever(4). Notwithstanding agreements to incorporate nature's values into actions, including the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF)(5) and the UN Sustainable Development Goals(6), predominant environmental and development policies still prioritize a subset of values, particularly those linked to markets, and ignore other ways people relate to and benefit from nature(7). Arguably, a 'values crisis' underpins the intertwined crises of biodiversity loss and climate change(8), pandemic emergence(9) and socio-environmental injustices(10). On the basis of more than 50,000 scientific publications, policy documents and Indigenous and local knowledge sources, the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) assessed knowledge on nature's diverse values and valuation methods to gain insights into their role in policymaking and fuller integration into decisions(7,11). Applying this evidence, combinations of values-centred approaches are proposed to improve valuation and address barriers to uptake, ultimately leveraging transformative changes towards more just (that is, fair treatment of people and nature, including inter- and intragenerational equity) and sustainable futures