Department of Computational Landscape Ecology, UFZ-Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, Leipzig, Germany.
PLoS One. 2012;7(4):e35954. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0035954. Epub 2012 Apr 26.
Pollination is a well-studied and at the same time a threatened ecosystem service. A significant part of global crop production depends on or profits from pollination by animals. Using detailed information on global crop yields of 60 pollination dependent or profiting crops, we provide a map of global pollination benefits on a 5' by 5' latitude-longitude grid. The current spatial pattern of pollination benefits is only partly correlated with climate variables and the distribution of cropland. The resulting map of pollination benefits identifies hot spots of pollination benefits at sufficient detail to guide political decisions on where to protect pollination services by investing in structural diversity of land use. Additionally, we investigated the vulnerability of the national economies with respect to potential decline of pollination services as the portion of the (agricultural) economy depending on pollination benefits. While the general dependency of the agricultural economy on pollination seems to be stable from 1993 until 2009, we see increases in producer prices for pollination dependent crops, which we interpret as an early warning signal for a conflict between pollination service and other land uses at the global scale. Our spatially explicit analysis of global pollination benefit points to hot spots for the generation of pollination benefits and can serve as a base for further planning of land use, protection sites and agricultural policies for maintaining pollination services.
授粉是一项研究充分的生态系统服务，同时也面临威胁。全球作物产量的很大一部分依赖于动物授粉，或者从动物授粉中获益。我们利用全球 60 种依赖授粉或从中获益的作物的详细产量信息，在 5'×5'经纬度网格上绘制了全球授粉效益图。目前授粉效益的空间格局与气候变量和耕地分布只有部分相关。该授粉效益图详细地确定了授粉效益的热点区域，可以指导在何处通过投资土地利用结构多样性来保护授粉服务的政治决策。此外，我们还调查了各国经济在潜在授粉服务下降方面的脆弱性，因为依赖授粉效益的部分（农业）经济可能会受到影响。虽然农业经济对授粉的总体依赖似乎从 1993 年到 2009 年保持稳定，但我们看到授粉依赖作物的生产者价格上涨，我们将其解释为全球范围内授粉服务与其他土地利用之间冲突的早期预警信号。我们对全球授粉效益的空间明确分析指出了产生授粉效益的热点区域，并可以作为进一步规划土地利用、保护地点和农业政策以维持授粉服务的基础。
