{"title":"Can open access weeds occurrences across the European Union become a proxy for agricultural intensification?","authors":"","doi":"10.1016/j.ecolind.2024.112664","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Diverse communities of arable plants contribute to the long-term sustainability of agroecosystems and support a large variety of ecosystem services. Agricultural intensification influences the composition and structure of these communities and is one of the major drivers of biodiversity loss in Europe. Several European Union (EU) policies seek to reverse agroecosystems degradation and need biodiversity data-based indicators. Here we focus on arable fields with crops and arable plants. Open access to biodiversity data, such as through the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), opens multiple options to develop large-scale indicators. We investigate whether occurrences of certain weeds from GBIF could become indicators of lower levels of agricultural intensification. For this, we designed an EU-scale data-driven proof of concept, using a 2018 EU28-wide 10 m resolution map of maize and a total of 2,082,796 occurrences data for 156 weed species associated to this crop. A total of 12 arable plants sensitive to intensification were identified that could possibly become indicators. We also show how GBIF data is able to capture the effect of proxies for agricultural intensification on plant communities associated with crops. Even with the limitations of studying only one crop for a single year, we present some of the potential of these data to assess the condition of agroecosystems. Novel integration of biodiversity relevant observations across scales will need to underpin the characterization of agroecosystems to inform farm, as well as landscape management and policy impact evaluation.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":11459,"journal":{"name":"Ecological Indicators","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":7.0000,"publicationDate":"2024-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Ecological Indicators","FirstCategoryId":"93","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1470160X2401121X","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Diverse communities of arable plants contribute to the long-term sustainability of agroecosystems and support a large variety of ecosystem services. Agricultural intensification influences the composition and structure of these communities and is one of the major drivers of biodiversity loss in Europe. Several European Union (EU) policies seek to reverse agroecosystems degradation and need biodiversity data-based indicators. Here we focus on arable fields with crops and arable plants. Open access to biodiversity data, such as through the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), opens multiple options to develop large-scale indicators. We investigate whether occurrences of certain weeds from GBIF could become indicators of lower levels of agricultural intensification. For this, we designed an EU-scale data-driven proof of concept, using a 2018 EU28-wide 10 m resolution map of maize and a total of 2,082,796 occurrences data for 156 weed species associated to this crop. A total of 12 arable plants sensitive to intensification were identified that could possibly become indicators. We also show how GBIF data is able to capture the effect of proxies for agricultural intensification on plant communities associated with crops. Even with the limitations of studying only one crop for a single year, we present some of the potential of these data to assess the condition of agroecosystems. Novel integration of biodiversity relevant observations across scales will need to underpin the characterization of agroecosystems to inform farm, as well as landscape management and policy impact evaluation.
期刊介绍:
The ultimate aim of Ecological Indicators is to integrate the monitoring and assessment of ecological and environmental indicators with management practices. The journal provides a forum for the discussion of the applied scientific development and review of traditional indicator approaches as well as for theoretical, modelling and quantitative applications such as index development. Research into the following areas will be published.
• All aspects of ecological and environmental indicators and indices.
• New indicators, and new approaches and methods for indicator development, testing and use.
• Development and modelling of indices, e.g. application of indicator suites across multiple scales and resources.
• Analysis and research of resource, system- and scale-specific indicators.
• Methods for integration of social and other valuation metrics for the production of scientifically rigorous and politically-relevant assessments using indicator-based monitoring and assessment programs.
• How research indicators can be transformed into direct application for management purposes.
• Broader assessment objectives and methods, e.g. biodiversity, biological integrity, and sustainability, through the use of indicators.
• Resource-specific indicators such as landscape, agroecosystems, forests, wetlands, etc.