Pollination mapping for the present and future: A tier-based and integrative approach in Canada

Background/Question/Methods

: Pollination is an important ecosystem service, as it is the primary means by which plants reproduce. Pollinators are responsible for pollinating approximately 80% of flowering plants, and almost 10% of the global economic value of food production depends on insect pollination. Crop pollination reconciles agricultural production and biodiversity conservation. Mapping pollination as an ecosystem service assessment is significant in identifying ecosystem degradation, particularly in agriculturally dominated landscapes. This study provides a holistic framework to represent pollination complexities from national to landscape-scale in Canada with a tier-based approach under current and future alternatives. Our approach allows assessment of pollination service provision at national and local scales to inform decision-making on ecosystem management, stimulate conservation strategies, and enhance social-ecological resilience to deal with drivers of change such as climate change and land use and land cover changes. In this study, we have applied a pollination process-based model within the Artificial Intelligence for Environment and Sustainability (ARIES)­­­— a collaborative, integrative and spatially explicit tool for ecosystem service assessment ­as our modelling platform, using present and predicted land cover data and climate variables to provide pollination potential at the national and landscape scale in Canada for both current and future situations.

Results/Conclusions

: Our results highlight the importance of understanding how natural and semi-natural landscape diversity promotes pollination provisioning in agricultural landscapes. We found a consistent relationship between landscape structure and pollination provision service, with clearly identifiable wild pollination hotspots and deficit areas. Our results show that urban expansion will have an impact on pollination-a very fine local scale while climate change will have a broader impact across Canada. These results may help landscape managers and farmers identify areas where pollination deficit might increase in the near future and require monitoring in conjunction with policies and management to help minimize these potential impacts. This approach can also be extended to other ecosystem services and their potential supply under future scenarios.