Abstract
Suggestions that novel, non‐food, dedicated biomass crops used to produce bioenergy may provide opportunities to diversify and reinstate biodiversity in intensively managed farmland have not yet been fully tested at the landscape scale. Using two of the largest, currently available landscape‐scale biodiversity data sets from arable and biomass bioenergy crops, we take a taxonomic and functional trait approach to quantify and contrast the consequences for biodiversity indicators of adopting dedicated biomass crops on land previously cultivated under annual, rotational arable cropping. The abundance and community compositions of biodiversity indicators in fields of break and cereal crops changed when planted with the dedicated biomass crops, miscanthus and short rotation coppiced (SRC) willow. Weed biomass was consistently greater in the two dedicated biomass crops than in cereals, and invertebrate abundance was similarly consistently higher than in break crops. Using canonical variates analysis, we identified distinct plant and invertebrate taxa and trait‐based communities in miscanthus and SRC willows, whereas break and cereal crops tended to form a single, composite community. Seedbanks were shown to reflect the longer term effects of crop management. Our study suggests that miscanthus and SRC willows, and the management associated with perennial cropping, would support significant amounts of biodiversity when compared with annual arable crops. We recommend the strategic planting of these perennial, dedicated biomass crops in arable farmland to increase landscape heterogeneity and enhance ecosystem function, and simultaneously work towards striking a balance between energy and food security.
Highlights
Anthropogenic-induced climate change continues to be the single, overriding challenge to the future of humans and ecosystems, and reductions in emissions of CO2 are essential to limit the risks of climate change (IPCC, 2014)
Total seedbank densities did not differ in either of the biomass crops compared with break crops or cereals, but there was a trend for seedbank densities of the plant groups to be greater in miscanthus than in break or cereal crops
There was no consistent direction of differences in seedbank densities between short rotation coppiced (SRC) willows and the arable crops (Fig. 1, Table 2); there were lower densities of ruderals in SRC willows than in break crops (R = 0.37) and cereals (R = 0.38)
Summary
Anthropogenic-induced climate change continues to be the single, overriding challenge to the future of humans and ecosystems, and reductions in emissions of CO2 are essential to limit the risks of climate change (IPCC, 2014). Balancing the food and fuel security demands of a growing human population, in the context of climate change, has led to a global drive to increase production from land that has resulted in unforeseen land use conflicts, for crops traditionally grown for food being diverted for use in the transport biofuel industry (Searchinger et al, 2015). These conflicts compound genuine concerns that a shift in focus on to cheaper sources of gas, including the recent developments in the shale gas industry, could disrupt progress in the development. It is important to test whether cultivating perennial, dedicated biomass crops in annual arable crop-dominated landscapes could be used to enhance and conserve farmland biodiversity and ecosystem function
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