Abstract
Studies show that agricultural land requires investment in the habitat management of non-cropped areas to support healthy beneficial arthropods and the ecosystem services they provide. In a previous small plot study, we manually counted blooms over the season, and found that plots providing greater numbers of flowers supported significantly higher pollinator populations over that of spontaneous weed plots. Here, we examined the potential of deploying an inexpensive small unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) as a tool to remotely estimate floral resources and corresponding pollinator populations. Data were collected from previously established native wildflower plots in 19 locations on the University of Georgia experimental farms in South Georgia, USA. A UAV equipped with a lightweight digital camera was deployed to capture images of the flowers during the months of June and September 2017. Supervised image classification using a geographic information system (GIS) was carried out on the acquired images, and classified images were used to evaluate the floral area. The floral area obtained from the images positively correlated with the floral counts gathered from the quadrat samples. Furthermore, the floral area derived from imagery significantly predicted pollinator populations, with a positive correlation indicating that plots with greater area of blooming flowers contained higher numbers of pollinators.
Highlights
Agricultural landscape diversification is an important strategy for ameliorating the loss of biodiversity and boosting ecosystem services, such as biological control and pollination, provided by beneficial organisms [1,2]
The approach that we developed and tested using a unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to quantify floral resources has potential as an efficient method for predicting pollinator populations over large spatial scales
We found that small increases of floral area (0.12 m2), detected using a low-cost UAV with an RGB camera, corresponded with increases in pollinator visits (6–8 pollinators)
Summary
Agricultural landscape diversification is an important strategy for ameliorating the loss of biodiversity and boosting ecosystem services, such as biological control and pollination, provided by beneficial organisms [1,2]. The concept of habitat management has been promoted as a strategy for diversifying agricultural landscapes. Habitat management encompasses several approaches which may occur within-crop, within-farm, or within-landscape. One form of habitat management is the utilization of wildflower strips sown at field margins [3,4], or within fields [5] to attract beneficial insects, or to enhance the pollination and biocontrol of nearby crops. Numerous studies have evaluated and demonstrated the potential of wildflowers in agricultural systems for providing ecosystem services [3,4,5,6,7]. Evidence shows that the amount of floral resources (quantity of pollen or nectar production) and the type or diversity of flowering species has a positive effect on pollinator visits [8,9]
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
