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Optimal restoration for pollination services increases forest cover while doubling agricultural profits

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  • Sofía López-Cubillos
  • Eve McDonald-Madden
  • Margaret M Mayfield
  • Rebecca K Runting

Abstract

Pollinators are currently facing dramatic declines in abundance and richness across the globe. This can have profound impacts on agriculture, as 75% of globally common food crops benefit from pollination services. As many native bee species require natural areas for nesting, restoration efforts within croplands may be beneficial to support pollinators and enhance agricultural yields. Yet, restoration can be challenging to implement due to large upfront costs and the removal of land from production. Designing sustainable landscapes will require planning approaches that include the complex spatiotemporal dynamics of pollination services flowing from (restored) vegetation into crops. We present a novel planning framework to determine the best spatial arrangement for restoration in agricultural landscapes while accounting for yield improvements over 40 years following restoration. We explored a range of production and conservation goals using a coffee production landscape in Costa Rica as a case study. Our results show that strategic restoration can increase forest cover by approximately 20% while doubling collective landholder profits over 40 years, even when accounting for land taken out of production. We show that restoration can provide immense economic benefits in the long run, which may be pivotal to motivating local landholders to undertake conservation endeavours in pollinator-dependent croplands.Application of a novel planning framework to a coffee production landscape shows that landscape restoration for targeted species, such as wild bees, can have potential win-wins for both biodiversity and people in heavily human-modified landscapes.

Suggested Citation

  • Sofía López-Cubillos & Eve McDonald-Madden & Margaret M Mayfield & Rebecca K Runting, 2023. "Optimal restoration for pollination services increases forest cover while doubling agricultural profits," PLOS Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 21(5), pages 1-19, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pbio00:3002107
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.3002107
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    3. Phalan, Ben & Balmford, Andrew & Green, Rhys E. & Scharlemann, Jörn P.W., 2011. "Minimising the harm to biodiversity of producing more food globally," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 36(S1), pages 62-71.
    4. Rebecca K. Runting & Ruslandi & Bronson W. Griscom & Matthew J. Struebig & Musnanda Satar & Erik Meijaard & Zuzana Burivalova & Susan M. Cheyne & Nicolas J. Deere & Edward T. Game & F. E. Putz & Jessi, 2019. "Larger gains from improved management over sparing–sharing for tropical forests," Nature Sustainability, Nature, vol. 2(1), pages 53-61, January.
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