DOI: 10.5061/dryad.2547d7wnx
title: Data from: Pollinator Monitoring More than Pays for Itself

description: Resilient pollination services depend on sufficient abundance of
 pollinating insects over time. Currently, however, most knowledge about
 the status and trends of pollinators is based on changes in pollinator
 species richness and distribution only. Systematic, long-term monitoring
 of pollinators is urgently needed to provide baseline information on their
 status, to identify the drivers of declines and to inform suitable
 response measures. We evaluated the full economic costs of implementing
 four potential national monitoring schemes in the United Kingdom, based on
 power analyses that estimated sample sizes required to detect a 30%
 national scale change in pollinator populations over 10 years: 1)
 professional pollinator monitoring, 2) professional pollination service
 monitoring, 3) volunteer collected pan-traps and 4) volunteer focal floral
 observations. These costs were compared to: i) the costs of implementing
 separate, expert-designed, research and monitoring networks and ii) the
 economic benefits of pollination services threatened by pollinator loss.
 Estimated scheme costs ranged from £6,159/year for a 75 site volunteer
 focal flower observation scheme to £2.7M/year for an 800 site professional
 pollination service monitoring network. The estimated research costs saved
 by using the site network as research infrastructure range from
 £1.46-17M/year. The economic value of UK crop yield lost following a 30%
 decline in pollinators was estimated at ~£188M/year. Synthesis and
 applications. We evaluated the full costs of running pollinator monitoring
 schemes against the economic benefits to research and society they
 provide.  The annual costs of monitoring are ≤0.02%  of
 the estimated annual loss to UK crop production from a 30% decline in crop
 pollination services. Furthermore, by providing high quality scientific
 data, monitoring schemes would save at least £1.5 on data collection per
 £1 spent. Our findings demonstrate that long-term systematic monitoring
 can be a cost-effective tool for both addressing key research questions
 and setting action points for policy-makers. Careful consideration must be
 given to scheme design, the logistics of national-scale implementation and
 resulting data quality when selecting the most appropriate combination of
 surveyors, methods and site networks to deliver a successful
 scheme. 
description: The data are split into 4 annexes, which correspond to their
 annexes in the paper itself, which is open access. The methodologies are
 included below each description, copied from the paper itself, minus
 citations. Please note that raw salaray data from UKCEH and the University
 of Reading cannot be shared for confidentiality reasons and the raw expert
 survey responses cannot be shared due to the stipulations of the ethical
 approval at the time of the survey dissemination. Annex 6 contains
 summaries of these responses.  <strong>1. Annex 1
 - Scheme Construction</strong> This contains the
 data used to construct the schemes in terms of methods and
 volunteer/professional involvement. "Four
 hypothetical national scale monitoring schemes were developed, based on
 combinations of participants (whether data were collected and/or
 identified by volunteers or professionals, non-experts or experts),
 methods (how pollinators or crop pollination were sampled and samples
 processed) and metrics (what data were generated e.g. species abundance)
 with a focus on wild bees and hoverflies as key insect pollinator groups.
 Each ‘Recorder–Sampling Method–Metric’ combination was given a score based
 on feasibility and the degree of training required. This exercise
 considered 15 different methods, related research and using expert opinion
 across the partnership of authors to reach consensus (by simple majority
 agreement, following group discussion) on the assigned
 scores." <strong>2. Annex 3 - Cost
 Data</strong> This contains the raw cost data
 used to evaluate the costs of different monitoirng schemes. Raw personelle
 data cannot be shared as they are confidential to UKCEH and the University
 of Reading Instead an average of the two organizations is used and
 presented in the annex and study. This average is used insetad of either
 organizations costs throughout the paper.
 "<em>Costs estimated for each scheme covered: i) staff
 salaries to undertake field work, identify specimens and administer the
 scheme; ii) material costs for field equipment, specimen storage,
 travelling to and from sampling sites and postage of specimens to be
 identified; iii) training staff/volunteers and iv) maintaining digital
 records and publicly available data. These costs were based on the
 observed costs of a recent pollinator monitoring pilot study and
 implementation of the existing UK Pollinator Monitoring
 Scheme.</em>" <strong>3. Annex 6 -
 Expert Opinion survey response summary</strong>
 This contains a summery of the responses to the expert opinion
 survey conducted to determine the costs of research networks that could
 overlap with the proposed monitoring scheme. The raw expert responses
 cannot be shared due to a clause in the expert concent form at the time of
 submission that states "<em>Data collected in this survey will
 be retained for 5 years and securely stored only by the survey team. This
 data will only be used as part of the National Pollinator and Pollination
 Service Monitoring Scheme pilot survey and any projects that directly
 arise from it, including reports and
 publications.</em>" "<em>Thirty six
 experts were selected on the basis that they had either i) at least five
 publications on pollinator field research in northern or western Europe or
 ii) prior expertise in invertebrate population monitoring. Experts were
 divided into four groups based on their specific expertise, each of which
 was given a different selection of three research questions relevant to
 their expertise. Question 8 was posed to all four groups (Table 2). Twenty
 eight experts (78%) completed the questionnaire in full. To avoid biasing
 their answers, experts were not given any details of the proposed
 monitoring schemes or the power analysis.</em>
 <em>For each research question, experts were asked to give
 their opinion on the minimum and ideal site network attributes (number,
 scale and variation of sites sampled, regularity of sampling and years of
 sampling) and detectable rate of change in metrics of pollinators and
 pollination service to crops (e.g. abundance of pollinators) required to
 answer each question. Experts were also asked to state their confidence in
 their answers to capture uncertainty. The questionnaire was refined
 through a short pilot with members of the authorship team who were not
 involved in the survey drafting, resulting in only minor language changes.
 </em>" <strong>4. Annex 8 - Crop
 Pollinator Dependence and Price Transformation</strong>
 This contains the crop pollinator dependence ratio data used in
 the study. It is fully referenced.
 "<em>Dependence ratios represent a metric of crop
 yield loss in the absence of pollination services [...] Where available,
 dependence ratios were based on appropriate UK studies into pollination
 service benefits for particular crops, otherwise generalizations from
 global literature were used.</em>"