Modelling Landscapes for Resilient Pollination Services in the UK

Pollination services by wild insects, such as bees and hoverflies, can increase the total output of UK crop production by hundreds of millions of pounds annually. Changes in climate and land use can cause populations of these wild insects to decline and can displace certain species from their natural range. As a result, the pollination services provided by a community may decline or become very reliant upon a few key species. This greatly increases the economic risk posed to farmers, suppliers, retailers and consumers by further losses of pollinators, either as sudden, one time shocks or through the gradual impacts of pressures over a longer period. Changes to the landscape that affect pollinator populations will also affect the aesthetic and cultural value of the landscape for different people, potentially making them more or less willing to undertake measures to support pollinators, such as planting wildflower strips. At present, the exact impacts of various landscape and climate changes on pollinator populations and the pollination services they provide remains unknown.

This project, involving a team of ecologists, economists and sociologists, builds on data collected from several other studies to measure and map the current availability of pollination services, including their economic benefits, across the UK and how resilient they are to plausible future changes in the physical or economic environment. The project is divided into four work packages: work package 1 will develop new methods to map pollinator populations across the UK, based on existing data and estimate the economic value of these pollinator populations. work package 2 will use existing data, and a small amount of new data, to examine the links between pollinator visits and economic output in four major UK crops (apples, strawberries, oilseed rape and field beans), and identify the key tipping points where services will be inadequate. work package 3 will use innovative social science techniques to examine how changes in the landscape that affect pollinators will impact upon different people's cultural values for those landscapes. Finally, work package 4 will work with stakeholders (e.g. farmers, policy makers, retailers) to develop a series of realistic and relevant future scenarios that each consider changes in: i) the climate; ii) markets for different crops (which affects how much is planted); and, iii) wider land use. Combining information from all of the work packages, the project will examine how these changing conditions will affect pollinator populations, the economic benefits of the pollination services they provide and the impacts that changes in the landscape affecting pollinators will have on social values. The project will then examine the capacity of pollinator populations to recover their service providing potential after sudden events (e.g. extreme weather) under each scenario, as well as the vulnerability of crop markets to declines in pollinated crop production abroad.

Throughout, the project will be supported by a steering committee of stakeholders who will work with the project team to ensure the outcomes are the most realistic and relevant to UK food systems. The projects outcomes, including detailed maps of pollinator populations and pollination services across the UK under current and future conditions and new information on people's landscape preferences, will be used to produce new outreach materials (in collaboration with a specialist artist), policy briefs and discussion workshops for a wide range of stakeholders.

Pollination services by insects, particularly bees and hoverflies, underpin millions of pounds of crop production within the UK. Pollinator populations are under considerable pressure from a number of sources, including climate change, agricultural intensification and habitat loss. These ongoing pressures on pollinator populations have raised concerns about the continued resilience to change and the possible consequences of pollinator losses. Although a range of measures to support pollinators have been developed, their uptake generally remains low, in part because of negative perceptions that growers often have on the visual impacts these measures can have on the landscape.

This project uses a series of interlinked methods, spanning ecology, economics and sociology, to explore the impacts of plausible future scenarios on the resilience of pollinator natural capital, identify tipping points in service provision and assessing the feedbacks these have on economic and socio-cultural values.

The project consists of four work packages with their own distinct methods. 1) Existing spatial and temporal modelling techniques will be combined to produce novel models of pollinator populations and their economic values in the UK. 2) Drawing on existing and new field studies, the relationships between pollinators and pollination services, including the key tipping points at which services become sub-optimal or non-viable, will be modelled for four major UK crops. 3) Novel visual social science methods will be used to explore the effects of changing landscapes for pollinators on the socio-cultural values associated with landscapes. 4) In collaboration with a broad range of stakeholders, the project will develop new, narrative scenarios combining changes in: i) climate, ii) land use policy, and iii) crop markets, and explore how they affect the availability of pollination services and the resilience of the UK food system to losses of pollinators abroad.

The outcomes of the project will be relevant to policy makers, farmers and growers associations and the wider public, all of whom will be engaged throughout the project's lifespan through a series of targeted impact activities. This will include working with artist Laura Sorvala to develop visual materials tailored for different stakeholder groups. A stakeholder workshop will also be held at the end of the project to encourage dialogue and discussion regarding the outcomes of the project.

1) Policymakers: the project will engage Defra and Natural England throughout as part of the project steering committee who will provide advice and information leading up to the scenario development workshop. This will ensure that the scenarios used in the project are as realistic and relevant to current policy as possible. The outcomes align with a number of policy priorities: mapping the resilience of pollination services will allow Natural England to better target the 'Pollinator and Farm Wildlife' package of the Countryside Stewardship scheme and provide insights into the cultural values associated with the landscape to allow further refinements to agri-environment incentives. The baseline maps of current pollinator natural capital will also highlight areas where primary research on relationship between pollinators and pollination services in the crop production would be beneficial (National Pollinator Strategy, Evidence Action 7). The associations between habitat supporting pollinator natural capital and cultural values will feed into the development of a framework for assessing the indirect benefits and socio-cultural value of pollinators to the public (Evidence Action 9) and aligns with the commitment to maintain landscape character in the Natural Environment White Paper. By estimating the economic value of pollinator natural capital, the project can also feed into national green accounting as recommended by the National Ecosystem Assessment Follow On Report. Finally an LWEC Policy and Practice Note will be produced.

2) Farmers and Growers: The National farmers Union will be engaged throughout as part of the project steering committee to ensure that the scenarios developed are realistic and acceptable to current and future UK farming. The mapping work produced by the project will allow for growers associations and supermarket stakeholders to identify areas within their UK supply chain that are at risk of pollinator losses and provide targeted advice. Targeted factsheets and videos will be developed for growers to communicate the findings to a wider audience and provide further advice to maintain resilient pollinator natural capital on their holdings. The project team will also attend specialist grower events to further discuss and disseminate the project findings.

3) Wider publics: Declining and unstable pollinator populations can cause price shocks through the supply chain and losses of habitat to support pollinator natural capital which are likely to affect the cultural value of the wider countryside. Targeted dissemination materials will be developed to communicate the impact of pollinator losses on human wellbeing and suggest actions that the public can take to support pollinator resilience. These will be tailored towards the landscape values expressed in the participatory visual research in the project. Materials will be disseminated through the environmental groups and charities with which the team have established relationships and will include participation in public science events (e.g. RES National Insect Week, Bioblitz, and ESRC Festival of Social Science) in order to engage audiences and disseminate findings.

Press releases and consultation with stakeholders will be undertaken with every major project output to maximise the immediate dissemination and impact of our findings with an emphasis on visual elements (maps, art and landscape photographs) to effectively communicate findings to diverse audiences.