Cost-effective biodiversity conservation with organic farming – spatial allocation is key
To make the best use of the limited funding for biodiversity conservation, resources should be used cost-effectively. Support to organic farming is a widely implemented strategy to enhance farmland biodiversity, yet its cost-effectiveness for biodiversity conservation remains largely unexplored. Using an ecological-economic model calibrated with data from southern Sweden, we evaluated the cost-effectiveness of organic farming […]
Organic farming and annual flower strips reduce parasite prevalence in honeybees and boost colony growth in agricultural landscapes
In Journal of Applied Ecology – Despite the major role that insect pollinators play in crop production, agricultural intensification drives them into decline. Various conservation measures have been developed to mitigate the negative effects of agriculture on insect pollinators. In a novel comparison of the efficacy of three conservation measures on honeybee colony growth, we […]
Organic farming and annual flower strips reduce parasite prevalence in honeybees and boost colony growth in agricultural landscapes
Published in Journal of Applied Ecology. 1. Despite the major role that insect pollinators play in crop production, agricultural intensification drives them into decline. Various conservation measures have been developed to mitigate the negative effects of agriculture on insect pollinators. 2. In a novel comparison of the efficacy of three conservation measures on honey bee […]
Scale-dependent effectiveness of on-field vs. off-field agri-environmental measures for wild bees
The effectiveness of agri-environment schemes depends on scheme type, taxon and landscape. Here, we show how spatial scale, i.e. studied transect, field or farm level, and controlling for yield loss, can drastically change the evaluation of biodiversity benefits of on-field (organic farming) vs. off-field (flower strips) schemes. We selected ten agricultural landscapes in Central Germany, […]
Configurational crop heterogeneity increases within‐field plant diversity
Increasing landscape heterogeneity by restoring semi‐natural elements to reverse farmland biodiversity declines is not always economically feasible or acceptable to farmers due to competition for land. We hypothesized that increasing the heterogeneity of the crop mosaic itself, hereafter referred to as crop heterogeneity, can have beneficial effects on within‐field plant diversity. Using a unique multi‐country […]
