Enhancing the benefits to biodiversity and ecosystem services within
      arable field margins
Creators: name: Ashby, Mark
Publisher: name: Lancaster University
Year: 2018

description: We need to move towards more sustainable farming methods that maximise
      yields whilst protecting the environment. One approach that would achieve
      this goal is ecological intensification, which seeks to manage the
      biodiversity and ecological processes underpinning agricultural production
      so that damaging farming practices can be replaced or reduced. Forb-rich
      arable field margins have been shown to benefit flower-visiting insects
      such as wild bees, and recent evidence suggests that they can also enhance
      the levels of pollination and pest control in adjacent crop fields. They
      may also promote a suite of additional ecosystem services of societal and
      agronomic importance, but this has yet to be established. Furthermore, the
      ability of forb-rich field margins to deliver multiple benefits (i.e.
      ecosystem multifunctionality), including pest control and pollination, is
      likely to be contingent on a range of local and landscape factors. Using a
      range of pre-existing field margin plots (n = 98) distributed across 16
      arable farms in central eastern England, this study first sought to
      examine whether high quality forb-rich field margins promote ecosystem
      multifunctionality more effectively than low quality forb-poor field
      margins. This involved measuring a range ecosystem services within and
      adjacent to field margin plots, including pest control, pollination, soil
      carbon storage, flood alleviation, the abundance of invertebrate ecosystem
      service providers and the amount of invertebrate biodiversity. Secondly,
      it established whether arable field margins provide adequate foraging
      resources for flower-visiting insects. And thirdly, it determined the
      local and landscape factors (including margin quality) that best promote
      ecosystem service provision and invertebrate biodiversity within
      agro-ecosystems.
      
      The findings indicated that quality was the most important determinant of
      ecosystem multifunctionality within arable field margins, as high quality
      margins supported significantly greater levels of pest control,
      pollination, flood alleviation and invertebrate biodiversity. However, a
      range of additional local and landscape management prescriptions further
      enhanced the multifunctionality of arable field margins, such as the level
      of vehicle traffic margins receive, vegetation height, landscape
      complexity and the amount of floral resources provided by the adjacent
      hedgerow. Despite the multiple benefits of high quality field margins,
      they were also found to enhance invertebrate crop pests. This may reduce
      the willingness of farmers to adopt forb-rich habitats on their land.
      Finally, the present study highlights that more consideration should be
      given to the forb species included within field margin seed mixes, as
      certain species were found to promote agronomically damaging crop pests,
      whereas other species not currently included in field margin seed mixes
      were extremely attractive to several important flower-visiting taxa or
      flowered during spring; a period in which field margins are floristically
      poor.
      
      This thesis clearly demonstrates that forb-rich field margins provide
      multiple agronomic, societal and biodiversity benefits, and outlines the
      important drivers of ecosystem multifunctionality. As such, it provides
      farmers and landowners with a clear set of management guidelines for
      promoting biodiversity and ecosystem services within arable field margins.