bee
The 2007 Countryside Survey is now available for download, the latest audit of the UK countryside reveals more information about declining pollinator – especially bees – numbers in the wild. The survey undertaken regularly since 1978 is one of the worlds leading land use surveys and offers insights into trends of land use.
The latest survey highlights how changes in small patches of land could be influencing the survival of insects that pollinate our crops and plants. The culmination in area of small patches being managed or used differently appears to be reducing the diversity of nectar plants. The reports picks up on the findings that between 1990 and 2007 the numbers of nectar plants have declined – up to 8% reduction in number of species in sample plots. The numbers appear to have reduced in the small semi-natural areas in response to changes of land management. These changes in small but numerous areas mean that pollinators have less available food and habitat that they rely on.
The biggest declines in nectar plants where found in agricultural land, neutral grassland, broadleaved, mixed and yew woodlands and coniferous forests. The declines in number of nectar plants were smallest in the larger areas of land. One of the studies also found the areas with high sheep numbers also saw lowest numbers of nectar plants. this has particular impacts on some types of heath, marsh, fen and bogs.
Changes to land use appears to have allowed more competitive species to take over areas that had been previously managed. As the areas have been left untended the resulting overgrowth has prevented wildflowers from flourishing. However allowing some small areas to develop naturally has also led to some habitat improvements especially for streamside margins where leaving the margins to overgrow have led to better freshwater quality. Other forces that are helping more competitive plants seems to be air pollution where nitrogen compounds are deposited into the soil and acts as fertilizer. Many wild nectar plants require low nutrient soils in order to prevent being crowded our by other species.
Environment Secretary, Caroline Spelman, said “Pollinating insects are vital to our existence, helping to provide the food on our tables. It is important that we investigate the causes of the decline and take action to address it. The UK has some of the best environmental scientists in the world and using their skills we are gathering more information on changes to our land and the effects this has on species and habitats. This survey will help us analyse what effects policy decisions have and where and how we need to take action.”
Lead author of the Integrated Assessment, Dr Simon Smart from the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, said “Quantifying ecosystem services and understanding the interactions between them provides a significant challenge for scientists, one which we’re only just developing techniques to investigate. This new analysis, possible because of a unique national dataset, delivers, for the first time, evidence that key global change phenomena such as air pollution and land use change have affected delivery of ecosystems services across the British countryside over the last two decades. As well as measuring different services, such as pollination, we’ve also determined possible causes of changes in services over time, and even modelled what might happen under a number of ‘what if’ scenarios.”
Photo credit: BinaryApe
