Abstract
Diversifying agricultural landscapes may mitigate biodiversity declines and improve pest management. Yet landscapes are rarely managed to suppress pests, in part because researchers seldom measure key variables related to pest outbreaks and insecticides that drive management decisions. We used a 13-year government database to analyse landscape effects on European grapevine moth (Lobesia botrana) outbreaks and insecticides across c. 400 Spanish vineyards. At harvest, we found pest outbreaks increased four-fold in simplified, vineyard-dominated landscapes compared to complex landscapes in which vineyards are surrounded by semi-natural habitats. Similarly, insecticide applications doubled in vineyard-dominated landscapes but declined in vineyards surrounded by shrubland. Importantly, pest population stochasticity would have masked these large effects if numbers of study sites and years were reduced to typical levels in landscape pest-control studies. Our results suggest increasing landscape complexity may mitigate pest populations and insecticide applications. Habitat conservation represents an economically and environmentally sound approach for achieving sustainable grape production.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 73-83 |
| Number of pages | 11 |
| Journal | Ecology letters |
| Volume | 24 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Jan 2021 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:We thank the Consejer?a de Agricultura, Ganader?a, Pesca y Desarrollo Sostenible of the Junta de Andaluc?a, especially the Red de Alerta e Informaci?n Fitosanitaria (RAIF) for collecting and providing the data to perform this study. Lingling Liu provided code to extract the NDVI measures from Google Earth Engine. We also thank the many farmers and private landowners involved in this study. This work was financed by the research project SECBIVIT, which was funded through the 2017?2018 Belmont Forum and BiodivERsA joint call for research proposals, under the BiodivScen ERA-Net COFUND programme, with the funding organisations: AEI/Spain, BMBF/Germany, ANR/France, NWO/Netherlands, UEFISCDI/Romania, FWF/Austria (Grant number I 4025-B32) and the NSF/USA (Grant #1850943). This research is part of the BiodivERsA project VineDivers and was funded through the 2013-2014 BiodivERsA/FACCE-JPI joint call for research proposals, with the national funders: Austrian Science Fund (grant number I 2044-B25), French National Research Agency, Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, Romanian Executive Agency for Higher Education, Research, Development and Innovation Funding and Federal Ministry of Education and Research.
Funding Information:
We thank the Consejería de Agricultura, Ganadería, Pesca y Desarrollo Sostenible of the Junta de Andalucía, especially the Red de Alerta e Información Fitosanitaria (RAIF) for collecting and providing the data to perform this study. Lingling Liu provided code to extract the NDVI measures from Google Earth Engine. We also thank the many farmers and private landowners involved in this study. This work was financed by the research project SECBIVIT, which was funded through the 2017–2018 Belmont Forum and BiodivERsA joint call for research proposals, under the BiodivScen ERA‐Net COFUND programme, with the funding organisations: AEI/Spain, BMBF/Germany, ANR/France, NWO/Netherlands, UEFISCDI/Romania, FWF/Austria (Grant number I 4025‐B32) and the NSF/USA (Grant #1850943).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 The Authors. Ecology Letters published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Keywords
- Biological control
- Lobesia botrana
- Spain
- ecoinformatics
- ecosystem services
- integrated pest management
