DOI: 10.5061/dryad.2z34tmpj4
title: Data from: Agri-environment conservation set-asides have co-benefits for connectivity

description: Widespread declines in farmland biodiversity have led to state-funded
 schemes which take land out of production to create (semi-)natural
 habitats for biodiversity (e.g. EU agri-environment schemes; US
 Conservation Reserve Program). Common features of such schemes are
 grassland strips at the edges of agricultural fields, and we examine
 potential co-benefits of these biodiversity set-asides for contributing to
 grassland connectivity. Although set-aside strips had negligible impact on
 landscape-scale species persistence (using metapopulation models
 parameterized for flying insects run on 267 landscapes of ~30 000 ha
 across England), they nonetheless improved connectivity in 74% (198/267)
 of landscapes (comparing landscapes with and without set-asides), as shown
 by range expansion rates increasing by up to 100%. Benefits of set-aside
 strips varied according to species type (high/low dispersal, high/low
 population density), but had little benefit for species with low dispersal
 and small population sizes, which  enerally failed to expand.
 High dispersal/high density species were already successful expanders
 regardless of set-asides (&gt; 75% of simulations were successful
 without set-sides) although expansion rates were still improved when
 set-asides were added. Whilst alternative strategies for placement of
 set-aside strips (more/less aggregated), revealed no consensus ‘better’
 strategy across species types, set-aside benefits were generally greatest
 in landscapes with intermediate availability of semi-natural grassland
 (0.5-4% over). We conclude that small-scale set-asides have the potential
 to improve connectivity, which we expect to help some species track
 climate change, and connect habitat patches within existing climate space
 for others. However, set-asides are unlikely to benefit low dispersal
 species which are probably at greatest risk from agricultural
 intensification.    
description: Habitat layers used in this analyses were derived from
 semi-natural grassland cells from the 25 m raster of the 2015 UK Land
 Cover Map (available from UKCEH https://www.ceh.ac.uk/services/land-cover-map-2015) and option points from the Environmental Stewardship Scheme published by Natural England (available from data.gov https://data.gov.uk/dataset/6c0f19e7-9a2d-4c50-b548-3b7d4b9c18bb/environmental-stewardship-scheme-options-england). These layers were combined and used to produce raster layers of habitat area at 500 m resolution. Models were run within 267 20 km diameter, non-overlapping circular landscapes arranged on a regular grid (included). The construction of alternative habitat arrangement scenarios is outlined in the original paper.
description: <strong>IFM_results.zip</strong>
 Zip file containing (1) IFM_results.csv, the outcomes of IFM
 simulations for each landscape/scenario/species type combination and
 (2) README.txt explaining column headings
 <strong>MPC_results.zip</strong>
 Zip file containing (1) MPC_results.csv, the outcomes of
 metapopulation capacity calculations for each landscape/scenario/species
 type combination and (2) README.txt explaining column headings
 <strong>landscapes.zip</strong>
 Zip file containing the ESRI shapefile of landscapes as used in
 this analysis   R code for both
 metapopulation models is included within the Supplementary Materials of
 the original paper.