Linking Land Cover Data and Crop Yields for Mapping and Assessment of Pollination Services in Europe
By Grazia Zulian, Joachim Maes, M. Paracchini. 2013
138 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Pollination is a key ecosystem service as many crops but in particular, fruits and vegetables are partially dependent on pollinating insects to produce food for human consumption. Here we assessed how pollination services are delivered at the European scale. We used this assessment to estimate the relative contribution of wild pollinators to crop production. We developed an index of relative pollination potential, which is defined as the relative potential or relative capacity of ecosystems to support crop pollination. The model for relative pollination potential is based on the assumption that different habitats, but in particular forest edges, grasslands rich in flowers and riparian areas, offer suitable sites for wild pollinator insects. Using data of the foraging range of wild bees with short flight distances, we linked relative pollination potential to regional statistics of crop production. At aggregated EU level, the absence of insect pollination would result in a reduction of between 25% and 32% of the total production of crops which are partially dependent on insect pollination, depending on the data source used for the assessment. This production deficit decreases to 2.5% if only the relative pollination potential of a single guild of pollinators is considered. A strength of our approach is the spatially-explicit link between land cover based relative pollination potential and crop yield which enables a general assessment of the benefits that are derived from pollination services in Europe while providing insight where pollination gaps in the landscape occur.
Subfields: Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics, Insect Science, Nature and Landscape Conservation
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/433552019dd86105cf85f6a473713c1dfe7d5f97
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In Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics
In Insect Science
In Nature and Landscape Conservation
Citations in the corpus
- Ecosystem services classification: A systems ecology perspective of the cascade framework (2017, background): “A. La Notte et al. / Ecologic le Zulian et al., 2013).”