Agricultural Biodiversity Trend Monitoring

Agricultural biodiversity trend monitoring developed in the ‘MonViA’ project is pursued through three complementary routes at two spatial level landscape levels, the national and the regional. Trend monitoring targets:

Monitoring the diversity of habitats at the national level
Insect monitoring
Monitoring of other groups of organisms

Monitoring the diversity of habitats is based on the analysis of:

Nationwide land-use data based on agricultural statistics;
Nationwide land-use data based on remote sensing;
Small structures and other landscape elements related to biodiversity and include structural features such as hedges, ponds, pits and terraces, which offer a particular habitat for flora and fauna;
Genetic diversity in agriculture.

Insect monitoring is addressed through:

Wild bee monitoring

The use of trap nests for recording above-ground-nesting wild bees enables the project's scientists to document and quantify trophic interactions between wild bees, wasps and parasitoids beyond recording species composition. Nesting material can draw conclusions about the food resources used (pollen analysis) and the available resources of the surrounding agricultural landscape and provide information on pathogens and pesticide residues. This module focuses on developing and establishing molecular biological workflows and pipelines that will use standardised trap nests as a valuable information source for monitoring programs.

Honey and wild bee monitoring through a digital platform

A digital platform for wild and honeybee data is being developed at the Institute for Bee Protection at the Julius Kühn Institute (JKI) in Braunschweig (Germany). This platform aims to gather and harmonise heterogeneous spatiotemporal data to establish nationwide cooperation among specialist institutes and MonViA project partners. For example, land use, environmental, and climate data are available for long-term spatiotemporal trend analyses on wild and honeybee populations.

Trend monitoring of beneficial insects

This module monitors the trends of parasitic wasps and flies or specialised predators such as hoverflies, ladybirds, or pirate bugs, all of which are closely intertwined with their host and prey species' population dynamics, therefore a principal function in food webs. They are essential indicators for the ecosystem service ‘pest control’ and indicate the presence of certain host species. Such trend monitoring aims to provide data for long-term population changes of these beneficial insects as a function of land use and other exogenous factors (e.g. climate changes).

Monitoring of other groups of organisms will be approached through:

Monitoring of soil organisms

Monitoring of soil organisms aims to develop a monitoring concept on the effects of cultivation measures on the diversity and function of earthworm communities as a basis for a national cost-effective and personnel-saving monitoring. On this basis, long-term trends in the biodiversity of earthworm communities in Germany's specific agricultural areas can be derived.

Monitoring of pests

The pests monitoring module aims to develop a pest and pathogen monitoring framework on cultivated plants and test it on a small scale. Gradually, crops, wine and apple production will be examined and, if necessary, extended by further cultivations later. Pests and pathogens are essential components of biodiversity in agricultural landscapes and account for a significant proportion of the biomass. Furthermore, they are a vital food resource for higher trophic levels in predator-prey relationships. Pests are indicators of the natural regulatory capacity of agroecosystems, including the direct and indirect effects of interventions such as plant protection measures.

Monitoring of vegetation on the broader landscape and plants on arable land

The module on ‘monitoring vegetation’ aims to cover all different vegetation types within the agricultural landscape. The module on ‘arable plant monitoring’ focuses on weed plants within arable fields, which form the most significant part of the total agricultural area. Especially intensively managed arable fields suffer from a low arable plant diversity. Different survey methods for arable weeds will be tested in the module on ‘arable plant monitoring’. The aim is to identify a process, which fits best to the goals of a national monitoring program.

Trend monitoring

Relevance for monitoring and evaluation of the CAP

Evaluating biodiversity: Monitoring and evaluating agricultural landscape biodiversity has been frequently controversial and disputed. MonViA provides an integrated approach to biodiversity monitoring on agricultural land that addresses all aspects of biodiversity (different modules on habitats, landscape elements, genetic resources, fauna, insects and other organisms) at the national and regional landscape spatial scales. With MonViA's two other tools (the question-based monitoring and the citizen science-based monitoring) this monitoring framework will form an integrated monitoring and evaluation framework for biodiversity issues. More specifically, monitoring can support evaluation which addresses the effectiveness of Agri-environmental Measures (AEM) along the following axes:

Habitat diversity through land-use and landscape structure monitoring;
Presence and diversity of pollinators through the diversity of honey and wild bee and of macroinvertebrates through the diversity of beneficial organisms;
Soils through the diversity of earthworms and of microbiological communities.

MonViA’s data on agricultural biodiversity trend monitoring can be used directly and indirectly in evaluation studies. Directly, monitoring data can be used to calculate Impact Indicator 19 (I.19) on ‘Enhancing biodiversity protection: Percentage of species and habitats of Community interest related to agriculture with stable or increasing trends, with a breakdown of the percentage for wild pollinator species’. Indirectly, monitoring data can assist the evaluation of various measures designed to support agricultural biodiversity or farming in Natura 2000 areas. They may not address a specific impact indicator but a broader evaluation question. For example, MonViA’s data on agricultural biodiversity trend monitoring can address evaluation questions related to the contribution of CAP Strategic Plans to sustainability and nature conservation.

In Germany, MonVia complements the national conservation monitoring schemes to offer an integrated monitoring framework. The data and methods of MonVia are a supplement to the corresponding ongoing federal conservation monitoring programme. Thus, there are no particular prerequisites to use the monitoring data when they become publicly available. MonVia’s approach to agricultural biodiversity monitoring may be transferable to the other Member States who have a similar monitoring background and monitoring needs.

Last modification date:

08/12/2021

Project details

MonViA:
Monitoring of Biodiversity in Agricultural Landscapes

Objectives

The purpose of MonVia is to complement the national conservation monitoring schemes in Germany and to address the following questions:

How does biological diversity develop on open landscapes under the influence of agricultural production, land use and agricultural structural changes?
How do changes in biological diversity impact the performance ability and stability of agricultural production systems?
How do agricultural and environmental measures affect farmland biodiversity and how can this knowledge support the design of measures in the future?

MonViA monitors the quality and diversity of habitats and the status of different functional groups of organisms (pollinators, pests, beneficial organisms and soil fauna) that are particularly important for the performance of agricultural production systems. Trend monitoring and question-based monitoring are in a complete one-to-one mapping in the sense that each monitoring activity is designed to respond to one question about the effectiveness of current and future agricultural measures. For example, long-term monitoring of land use and landscape structures addresses questions concerning agri-environmental measures' effectiveness in habitat diversity.

Timeframe:

2019 to 2023

Contacts of project holder:

Dr. Petra Dieker, Thuenen Institute of Biodiversity

Project website(s):

MonViA

MonViA overview

Territorial coverage:

Germany

Relevant CAP Objectives:

4. Climate change action
5. Environmental care
6. Preserve landscape and biodiversity
9. Protect food and health quality

Data Collection Systems Used:

Ad-hoc data collection
IACS/LPIS
National land use surveys
Copernicus
Eurostat

Associated Evaluation Approaches:

Desk research
Impact evaluation ex post
Data analysis

Type of Output:

Monitoring system / tool
New / improved data for M&E

Spatial Scale:

Regional
National

Keywords:

agricultural pest monitoring
bee monitoring
Biodiversity
genetic resources
habitats
insect monitoring
weed monitoring