Honey bees are the dominant pollinator of many crop systems and wild bees support more stable and efficient pollination services in specialty crops. However, habitats that can support these bees are decreasing and becoming more homogeneous in many agricultural landscapes, prompting the need for conservation programs that deliberately add wildflower patches into farm landscapes. Commercial blueberry production depends on pollination by honey bees and wild bees, and in the major production region of Michigan both types of pollinators are common. Despite the increasing investment in pollinator habitats, it is still unclear how to prioritize their locations. To identify regions where the addition of wildflower plantings for pollinators would provide benefit, we adopted a sequential GIS-based selection approach to identify marginal croplands with annual crops currently in southern Michigan that were in proximity to blueberry fields and evaluated township-level potential for land to convert to pollinator habitat. A cellular automata based spatial optimization model was then developed using pollinator abundance model and potential pollinator habitat as two primary inputs to target the locations where new pollinator plantings will provide the greatest benefit to crop pollination and pollinator conservation efforts.
Results/Conclusions
Potential pollinator habitat located within 1-km buffer of blueberry fields contributed 90% of the total increase of wild bee abundance. Both pollinator habitat quantity and placement of enhancements are important for delivering pollination services to crops and that crop field size is an important factor in the amount of benefit. The prioritization framework outlined here is highly applicable to other pollinator-dependent crops and other landscapes where beekeepers maintain colonies, and it can help guide subsequent regional investment in pollinator conservation programs.