Georg Andersson | Universidad Nacional de Rio Negro (original) (raw)
Papers by Georg Andersson
<p>The proportion of fully pollinated strawberries, i.e. having no malformations, from plan... more <p>The proportion of fully pollinated strawberries, i.e. having no malformations, from plants on organic and conventional farms. Boxes represent 25<sup>th</sup> and 75<sup>th</sup> of the sample, dots the median and error-bars the minimum and maximum values respectively.</p
V Congreso Internacional sobre Cambio Climático y Desarrollo Sustentable (La Plata, 14, 15 y 16 de septiembre de 2016), 2016
The TEEBAgriFood ‘Scientific and Economic Foundations’ report addresses the core theoretical issu... more The TEEBAgriFood ‘Scientific and Economic Foundations’ report addresses the core theoretical issues and controversies underpinning the evaluation of the nexus between the agri-food sector, biodiversity and ecosystem services and externalities including human health impacts from agriculture on a global scale. It argues the need for a ‘systems thinking‘ approach, draws out issues related to health, nutrition, equity and livelihoods, presents a Framework for evaluation and describes how it can be applied, and identifies theories and pathways for transformational change.
Agricultural Systems, 2021
The global demand for food is expected to continue increasing for decades, which may drive both a... more The global demand for food is expected to continue increasing for decades, which may drive both agricultural expansion and intensification. The associated environmental impacts are potentially considerable but will depend on how the agricultural sector develops. Currently, there are contrasting regional developments in agriculture; expansion and/or intensification in some regions and abandonment in others, as well as changes in the type of farming. However, the environmental consequences of changes in farm type are not well understood. Objective: We have evaluated the impacts of farm type on food production and three key environmental variables-landscape openness, grassland biodiversity and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions-in three marginal agricultural regions in Sweden. Methods: We do this by first dividing the population of farms in each region into types, based on their land-use and livestock holdings using an innovative clustering method. Thereafter we analysed changes in production activities for farm types over time and evaluated the environmental and food-production impacts, where landscape openness is quantified using a novel indicator. Results and conclusion: Our results show that there is not one single farm type that would simultaneously maximize food production, grassland biodiversity, and landscape openness, whilst minimizing GHG emissions. However, there exists considerable potential to manage the trade-offs between food production and these environmental variables. For example, by reducing land use for dairying and instead increasing both cropping for food production and extensive livestock grazing to maintain landscape openness and biodiversity-rich seminatural pastures, it would keep food production at similar levels. Significance: Our farm typology allows us to assess the multifunctionality of farming, by relating contrasting production activities to multiple ecosystem services, grassland biodiversity and GHG emissions for informing policy towards more sustainable agriculture. We have demonstrated this with examples under Swedish conditions, but it should to a large extent also be applicable for other countries.
Biological Conservation, 2018
Data used in Martin et al. (2019) compiled from 49 studies and 1,515 landscapes across Europe. In... more Data used in Martin et al. (2019) compiled from 49 studies and 1,515 landscapes across Europe. Includes data on the abundance of arthropod species per site and data on pollination, natural pest control and yields in crops across Europe
Assessing the effect of the time since transition to
Figure S1, related to Figure 1. Latitudinal specialization trends in standardized and unstandardi... more Figure S1, related to Figure 1. Latitudinal specialization trends in standardized and unstandardized network metrics. Figure S2, related to Figure 2. Relationships between cumulative annual temperature (growing degree days) and other climatic variables. Figure S3, related to Figure 3. Relationship between plant diversity and latitude in the 80 study regions. Figure S4, related to Table 1. Spatial autocorrelation in the residuals of minimal adequate linear models. Table S1, related to Figure 1. Detailed information about location and sampling intensity for each of the 80 sampling regions. Table S2, related to Figure 2. Minimal adequate linear models of the effects of multiple predictor variables on network specialization (ΔH2') in 80 study regions. Table S3, related to Table 1. Correlations between different specialization metrics and sampling effort and network size. 2. Supplemental Experimental Procedures Data set description Author contributions Extended acknowledgments
Functional traits data for 2088 species (morphospecies, individuals) from 144 arthropod families ... more Functional traits data for 2088 species (morphospecies, individuals) from 144 arthropod families sampled in agricultural landscapes across Europe. All traits are categorical and based on published literature or expert knowledge. They are described in Table 1 and Appendix S1 of Martin et al. (2019). The traits included are: feeding habit ('Functional group'), diet breadth, agricultural specialism, diet life history, overwintering habitat, dispersal mode, and stratum. Species' names were resolved in R package taxize
16Department of Zoology, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv 69978, could explain why the latitudinal s... more 16Department of Zoology, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv 69978, could explain why the latitudinal specialization gradient is
While an increasing number of studies indicate that the range, diversity and abundance of many wi... more While an increasing number of studies indicate that the range, diversity and abundance of many wild pollinators has declined, the global area of pollinator-dependent crops has significantly increased over the last few decades. Crop pollination studies to date have mainly focused on either identifying different guilds pollinating various crops, or on factors driving spatial changes and turnover observed in these communities. The mechanisms driving temporal stability for ecosystem functioning and services, however, remain poorly understood. Our study quantifies temporal variability observed in crop pollinators in 21 different crops across multiple years at a global scale. Using data from 43 studies from six continents, we show that (i) higher pollinator diversity confers greater inter-annual stability in pollinator communities, (ii) temporal variation observed in pollinator abundance is primarily driven by the three-most dominant species and (iii) crops in tropical regions demonstrate...
ABSTRACTHuman land use threatens global biodiversity and compromises multiple ecosystem functions... more ABSTRACTHuman land use threatens global biodiversity and compromises multiple ecosystem functions critical to food production. Whether crop yield-related ecosystem services can be maintained by few abundant species or rely on high richness remains unclear. Using a global database from 89 crop systems, we partition the relative importance of abundance and species richness for pollination, biological pest control and final yields in the context of on-going land-use change. Pollinator and enemy richness directly supported ecosystem services independent of abundance. Up to 50% of the negative effects of landscape simplification on ecosystem services was due to richness losses of service-providing organisms, with negative consequences for crop yields. Maintaining the biodiversity of ecosystem service providers is therefore vital to sustain the flow of key agroecosystem benefits to society.
Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment, 2014
ABSTRACT Organic farming has the potential to enhance ecosystem services such as crop pollination... more ABSTRACT Organic farming has the potential to enhance ecosystem services such as crop pollination. However, it is not known if a similar effect can be generated on conventional farms, without reducing external inputs such as inorganic fertilizers and pesticides, by using more complex crop rotations including ley for animal fodder production. In two separate designs, both located in southern Sweden, we tested if local organic farming and the landscape proportion of conventionally managed leys, along a landscape heterogeneity gradient, affected the pollination success of field bean. The number of developed pods was higher on organic farms compared to conventional ones. Development of beans, which demands high pollination efficiency, increased with increasing landscape heterogeneity, but only on organic farms. Increasing proportion of ley on conventional farms did not significantly influence the development of beans. The number of developed pods was not affected by the proportion of ley in the landscape. Our results demonstrate that in order to maximize pollination success it is important to improve both field management and preserve semi-natural habitats in the agricultural landscape. Reducing farming intensity with conventionally managed leys does not seem to be as effective as organic farming for delivering crop pollination services.
Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution
Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment, 2021
One of the most important challenges facing global agriculture is to ensure an adequate, stable f... more One of the most important challenges facing global agriculture is to ensure an adequate, stable food supply while conserving soil, water and biodiversity. The yield stability of pollinator-dependent crops, such as pear and apple, can be negatively affected by variability of the pollination service, which in turn can reduce mean yield. We explored how mean crop yield and yield variability were affected by pollinators and variability in their provision of the pollination service. Over four seasons we conducted a manipulative experiment in six pear and eight apple farms; fruit set (i.e., no. fruits/ no. flowers) was compared between flowers exposed to pollinators and those excluded from pollinators. We also recorded pollinator visitation rate to exposed flowers. We estimated the mean levels and spatial and temporal variability of both pollinator visitation and yield response by calculating the mean values per farm and the spatial (i.e., across trees within farm) and temporal (i.e., acr...
<p>The proportion of fully pollinated strawberries, i.e. having no malformations, from plan... more <p>The proportion of fully pollinated strawberries, i.e. having no malformations, from plants on organic and conventional farms. Boxes represent 25<sup>th</sup> and 75<sup>th</sup> of the sample, dots the median and error-bars the minimum and maximum values respectively.</p
V Congreso Internacional sobre Cambio Climático y Desarrollo Sustentable (La Plata, 14, 15 y 16 de septiembre de 2016), 2016
The TEEBAgriFood ‘Scientific and Economic Foundations’ report addresses the core theoretical issu... more The TEEBAgriFood ‘Scientific and Economic Foundations’ report addresses the core theoretical issues and controversies underpinning the evaluation of the nexus between the agri-food sector, biodiversity and ecosystem services and externalities including human health impacts from agriculture on a global scale. It argues the need for a ‘systems thinking‘ approach, draws out issues related to health, nutrition, equity and livelihoods, presents a Framework for evaluation and describes how it can be applied, and identifies theories and pathways for transformational change.
Agricultural Systems, 2021
The global demand for food is expected to continue increasing for decades, which may drive both a... more The global demand for food is expected to continue increasing for decades, which may drive both agricultural expansion and intensification. The associated environmental impacts are potentially considerable but will depend on how the agricultural sector develops. Currently, there are contrasting regional developments in agriculture; expansion and/or intensification in some regions and abandonment in others, as well as changes in the type of farming. However, the environmental consequences of changes in farm type are not well understood. Objective: We have evaluated the impacts of farm type on food production and three key environmental variables-landscape openness, grassland biodiversity and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions-in three marginal agricultural regions in Sweden. Methods: We do this by first dividing the population of farms in each region into types, based on their land-use and livestock holdings using an innovative clustering method. Thereafter we analysed changes in production activities for farm types over time and evaluated the environmental and food-production impacts, where landscape openness is quantified using a novel indicator. Results and conclusion: Our results show that there is not one single farm type that would simultaneously maximize food production, grassland biodiversity, and landscape openness, whilst minimizing GHG emissions. However, there exists considerable potential to manage the trade-offs between food production and these environmental variables. For example, by reducing land use for dairying and instead increasing both cropping for food production and extensive livestock grazing to maintain landscape openness and biodiversity-rich seminatural pastures, it would keep food production at similar levels. Significance: Our farm typology allows us to assess the multifunctionality of farming, by relating contrasting production activities to multiple ecosystem services, grassland biodiversity and GHG emissions for informing policy towards more sustainable agriculture. We have demonstrated this with examples under Swedish conditions, but it should to a large extent also be applicable for other countries.
Biological Conservation, 2018
Data used in Martin et al. (2019) compiled from 49 studies and 1,515 landscapes across Europe. In... more Data used in Martin et al. (2019) compiled from 49 studies and 1,515 landscapes across Europe. Includes data on the abundance of arthropod species per site and data on pollination, natural pest control and yields in crops across Europe
Assessing the effect of the time since transition to
Figure S1, related to Figure 1. Latitudinal specialization trends in standardized and unstandardi... more Figure S1, related to Figure 1. Latitudinal specialization trends in standardized and unstandardized network metrics. Figure S2, related to Figure 2. Relationships between cumulative annual temperature (growing degree days) and other climatic variables. Figure S3, related to Figure 3. Relationship between plant diversity and latitude in the 80 study regions. Figure S4, related to Table 1. Spatial autocorrelation in the residuals of minimal adequate linear models. Table S1, related to Figure 1. Detailed information about location and sampling intensity for each of the 80 sampling regions. Table S2, related to Figure 2. Minimal adequate linear models of the effects of multiple predictor variables on network specialization (ΔH2') in 80 study regions. Table S3, related to Table 1. Correlations between different specialization metrics and sampling effort and network size. 2. Supplemental Experimental Procedures Data set description Author contributions Extended acknowledgments
Functional traits data for 2088 species (morphospecies, individuals) from 144 arthropod families ... more Functional traits data for 2088 species (morphospecies, individuals) from 144 arthropod families sampled in agricultural landscapes across Europe. All traits are categorical and based on published literature or expert knowledge. They are described in Table 1 and Appendix S1 of Martin et al. (2019). The traits included are: feeding habit ('Functional group'), diet breadth, agricultural specialism, diet life history, overwintering habitat, dispersal mode, and stratum. Species' names were resolved in R package taxize
16Department of Zoology, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv 69978, could explain why the latitudinal s... more 16Department of Zoology, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv 69978, could explain why the latitudinal specialization gradient is
While an increasing number of studies indicate that the range, diversity and abundance of many wi... more While an increasing number of studies indicate that the range, diversity and abundance of many wild pollinators has declined, the global area of pollinator-dependent crops has significantly increased over the last few decades. Crop pollination studies to date have mainly focused on either identifying different guilds pollinating various crops, or on factors driving spatial changes and turnover observed in these communities. The mechanisms driving temporal stability for ecosystem functioning and services, however, remain poorly understood. Our study quantifies temporal variability observed in crop pollinators in 21 different crops across multiple years at a global scale. Using data from 43 studies from six continents, we show that (i) higher pollinator diversity confers greater inter-annual stability in pollinator communities, (ii) temporal variation observed in pollinator abundance is primarily driven by the three-most dominant species and (iii) crops in tropical regions demonstrate...
ABSTRACTHuman land use threatens global biodiversity and compromises multiple ecosystem functions... more ABSTRACTHuman land use threatens global biodiversity and compromises multiple ecosystem functions critical to food production. Whether crop yield-related ecosystem services can be maintained by few abundant species or rely on high richness remains unclear. Using a global database from 89 crop systems, we partition the relative importance of abundance and species richness for pollination, biological pest control and final yields in the context of on-going land-use change. Pollinator and enemy richness directly supported ecosystem services independent of abundance. Up to 50% of the negative effects of landscape simplification on ecosystem services was due to richness losses of service-providing organisms, with negative consequences for crop yields. Maintaining the biodiversity of ecosystem service providers is therefore vital to sustain the flow of key agroecosystem benefits to society.
Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment, 2014
ABSTRACT Organic farming has the potential to enhance ecosystem services such as crop pollination... more ABSTRACT Organic farming has the potential to enhance ecosystem services such as crop pollination. However, it is not known if a similar effect can be generated on conventional farms, without reducing external inputs such as inorganic fertilizers and pesticides, by using more complex crop rotations including ley for animal fodder production. In two separate designs, both located in southern Sweden, we tested if local organic farming and the landscape proportion of conventionally managed leys, along a landscape heterogeneity gradient, affected the pollination success of field bean. The number of developed pods was higher on organic farms compared to conventional ones. Development of beans, which demands high pollination efficiency, increased with increasing landscape heterogeneity, but only on organic farms. Increasing proportion of ley on conventional farms did not significantly influence the development of beans. The number of developed pods was not affected by the proportion of ley in the landscape. Our results demonstrate that in order to maximize pollination success it is important to improve both field management and preserve semi-natural habitats in the agricultural landscape. Reducing farming intensity with conventionally managed leys does not seem to be as effective as organic farming for delivering crop pollination services.
Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution
Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment, 2021
One of the most important challenges facing global agriculture is to ensure an adequate, stable f... more One of the most important challenges facing global agriculture is to ensure an adequate, stable food supply while conserving soil, water and biodiversity. The yield stability of pollinator-dependent crops, such as pear and apple, can be negatively affected by variability of the pollination service, which in turn can reduce mean yield. We explored how mean crop yield and yield variability were affected by pollinators and variability in their provision of the pollination service. Over four seasons we conducted a manipulative experiment in six pear and eight apple farms; fruit set (i.e., no. fruits/ no. flowers) was compared between flowers exposed to pollinators and those excluded from pollinators. We also recorded pollinator visitation rate to exposed flowers. We estimated the mean levels and spatial and temporal variability of both pollinator visitation and yield response by calculating the mean values per farm and the spatial (i.e., across trees within farm) and temporal (i.e., acr...