Dataset Information

Increasing landscape heterogeneity as a win-win solution to manage trade-offs in biological control of crop and woodland pests.

ABSTRACT: Agriculture and forestry cover more than 75% of Europe, and invertebrate pests are a costly challenge for these two economic sectors. Landscape management is increasingly promoted as a solution to enhance biological pest control, but little is known on its effects on adjacent crop fields and woodlands. This study aims to explore the effect of the proportion of woodlands and permanent grasslands as well as crop diversity on biological pest control simultaneously in cereals fields and woodland patches, in south-western France. We used different types of sentinel prey as well as bird and carabid community metrics to assess biological pest control potential in these two ecosystems. We first show that land cover variables influence biological pest control both in cereal fields and woodland patches, but have antagonistic effects in the two ecosystems. Although results vary according to the biological control indicator considered, we show that increasing landscape heterogeneity represents a valuable solution to manage trade-offs and promote higher average predation rates across forests and cereal fields. Our study therefore calls for more integrative studies to identify landscape management strategies that enable nature-based solutions across ecosystems.

SUBMITTER: Tortosa A

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10442452 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Increasing landscape heterogeneity as a win-win solution to manage trade-offs in biological control of crop and woodland pests.

Tortosa Axelle A Giffard Brice B Sirami Clélia C Larrieu Laurent L Ladet Sylvie S Vialatte Aude A

Scientific reports 20230821 1

Agriculture and forestry cover more than 75% of Europe, and invertebrate pests are a costly challenge for these two economic sectors. Landscape management is increasingly promoted as a solution to enhance biological pest control, but little is known on its effects on adjacent crop fields and woodlands. This study aims to explore the effect of the proportion of woodlands and permanent grasslands as well as crop diversity on biological pest control simultaneously in cereals fields and woodland pat ...[more]

PMID: 37604831

Similar Datasets

Project description:ContextThere is growing recognition that food systems must adapt to become more sustainable and equitable. Consequently, in developing country contexts, there is increasing momentum away from traditional producer-facing value chain upgrades towards efforts to increase both the availability and affordability of nutritious foods at the consumer level. However, such goals must navigate the inherent complexities of agricultural value chains, which involve multiple interactions, feedbacks and unintended consequences, including important but often surprising trade-offs between producers and consumers.Objective and methodsBased around the 'Loop' horticultural aggregation scheme of Digital Green in Bihar, India, we develop a system dynamics modelling framework to survey the value chain trade-offs emerging from upgrades that aim to improve the availability of fruits and vegetables in small retail-oriented markets. We model the processes of horticultural production, aggregation, marketing, and retailing - searching for futures that are 'win-win-win' for: (i) the availability of fruits and vegetables in small retail markets, (ii) the profits of farmers participating in aggregation, and (iii) the sustainability of the initial scheme for Digital Green as an organisation. We simulate two internal upgrades to aggregation and two upgrades to the wider enabling environment through a series of 5000 Monte Carlo trajectories - designed to explore the plausible future dynamics of the three outcome dimensions relative to the baseline.ResultsWe find that 'win-win-win' futures cannot be achieved by internal changes to the aggregation scheme alone, emerging under a narrow range of scenarios that boost supplies to the small retail market whilst simultaneously supporting the financial takeaways of farmers. In contrast, undesirable producer versus consumer trade-offs emerge as unintended consequences of scaling-up aggregation and the introduction of market-based cold storage.SignificanceThis approach furthers ongoing efforts to capture complex value chain processes, outcomes and upgrades within system dynamics modelling frameworks, before scanning the horizon of plausible external scenarios, internal dynamics and unintended trade-offs to identify 'win-win-win' futures for all.

Dataset Information

Increasing landscape heterogeneity as a win-win solution to manage trade-offs in biological control of crop and woodland pests.

Publications

Increasing landscape heterogeneity as a win-win solution to manage trade-offs in biological control of crop and woodland pests.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets