皇冠体育app

Findings from a new scientific study, released today by the Countryside Survey Partnership, show that the total effect of changes to small patches of land over a number of years could be one of the factors in the decline of pollinating insects such as bees.

皇冠体育app Countryside Survey Integrated Assessment report examines the status and trends of ecological processes that have value for individuals or society within Great Britain. 聽Headline messages from the report concern different ecosystem services, including pollination, soils, and the quality of freshwaters and their relationship with biodiversity.

皇冠体育app analysis reveals that between 1990 and 2007 the number of wild plant species that provide nectar for bees has decreased, in small patches of semi natural habitat. 皇冠体育appse small but highly significant changes combine to make a total reduction in the areas supporting wild nectar providing plants that pollinators rely on.

Environment Secretary, Caroline Spelman, said:

鈥淧ollinating 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. 皇冠体育app 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.鈥�

Lead author of the Integrated Assessment, Dr Simon Smart from the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, said:

鈥淨uantifying ecosystem services and understanding the interactions between them provides a significant challenge for scientists, one which we鈥檙e 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鈥檝e also determined possible causes of changes in services over time, and even modelled what might happen under a number of 鈥榳hat if鈥� scenarios.鈥�

皇冠体育app report concludes that the decline is mainly due to nectar providing plants being crowded out by the growth of more competitive plant species. This overgrowth may be related to reduced management and air pollution where the deposition of nitrogenous compounds from the air acts like a fertilizer.聽 In one habitat type - streamside margins - this reduced management has had benefits for freshwater quality, indicating the importance of not considering single ecosystem benefits in isolation.

皇冠体育app in-depth study of the habitats, soils and landscape features was carried out by scientists using specially developed electronic recording tools and web-enabled data systems to improve the efficiency of data collection. Many of the same sites have been monitored for each survey since 1978, but additional sites have been added in each survey to improve estimates of change in specific geographical areas.

Notes

• 皇冠体育app Countryside Survey can be found at:
• 皇冠体育app Countryside Survey is funded by a partnership of government-funded bodies led by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). Other partners include: Natural England, Welsh Assembly Government, Scottish Government, Northern Ireland Environment Agency, the Forestry Commission, Countryside Council for Wales and Scottish Natural Heritage. Countryside Survey is conducted by NERC鈥檚 Centre for Ecology & Hydrology.
• A team of 80 specially trained scientists from the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology carried out the survey of 591 randomly selected one-kilometre square sites, containing around 15,000 vegetation sampling plots, in England, Scotland and Wales during the summer of 2007. A complementary survey was carried out in Northern Ireland at the same time.聽 Surveys were undertaken in 1978, 1984, 1990, 1998 and 2007.
• 皇冠体育app Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (CEH) is the UK鈥檚 Centre of Excellence for integrated research in the land and freshwater ecosystems and their interaction with the atmosphere.聽 Media Relations Manager Dr Barnaby Smith can be contacted on +44(0)7920 295384 or [email protected]
• NERC is the UK鈥檚 main agency for funding and managing world-class research, training and knowledge exchange in the environmental sciences. NERC receives around 拢400m a year from the government鈥檚 science budget, which it uses to fund independent research and training in universities and its own research centres.