Crop pollination in Norwegian Fjords and climate change

1. Crop pollination in Norwegian Fjords and climate change Stein J. Hegland 1. Research Manager at the Norwegian Red deer Centre 2. Guest researcher at the University College of Sogn and Fjordane

2. My role • Involved as national partner • contribute to design and methodology etc • administrate field work(ers) and collect data • writing process • Research interest: plant-animal interaction • pollination ecology • herbivory (mainly large herbivores) • Authored conceptual review on plant-pollinator mismatches in relation to climate warming: Hegland, S.J., Nielsen, A., Lázaro, A., Bjerknes, A.L. & Totland, Ø. (2009) How does climate warming affect plant-pollinator interactions? Ecology Letters, 12, 184-195.

4. The Norwegian Fjords • positive effects on regional climate • makes fruit production possible «close to arctic» • ca 0-100 m.a.s.l • climate gradients are strong within the fjords

5. An example from ecological research that uses the climate gradient: SeedClimhttp://www.uib.no/en/rg/EECRG/55395/seedclim

6. Most important Norwegian crops (in tons): • apple (11440) • strawberry (9122) • raspberry (2262) • plums (1102) • sweet cherry (537) • blackcurrant (592) • pears (360)

8. Crop pollination • Pollinators are decisive or increase production in 35% (#87) of world crops • In 2005: value of insect pollination put to 153 million Euros annually (ca 10% of the total value of the worlds agriculture) • I Norway we know little, but we reckon that most of the important crops need pollination and in practise honey bees are often used as additive to natural pollinators Source: Christmann & Aw-Hassan (2012). Agriculture Ecosystems & Environment

9. Norway: apple, rasberry and sweet cherries as likely study candidates due to economics and dependence on pollinators

10. Crop production and climate change issues in Norway • Today: Climatic sensibility to fruit production and pollination • cold and wet weather in pollination season • Climate change now and future: Increased and/or heavy precipitation: • less pollinators active + decrease in bees? • harm flowers? • increased parasite problems, especially fungi? • tunnel production is partly an arrangement to meet these challenges • Increased temperature: probably positive • better pollination and growth • more bee species in the long run? • drought issues for some crops?

11. The Norwegian Fjords: a climate change laboratorium? • Gradients in temperature, precipitation and sun exposure (local climate) within the fruit growing area • For example the Sognefjord fruit district

12. Earlier flowering across time

13. Climate research challenges • Previous table highlight the importance of assessing the «real» climate gradient • not necessarily linearly related to altitude or continentality! • thus: establish the climate gradient may be important work • How link changes in pollination success to climate changes? • changes along climatic gradient is not enough! • thus: observational gradients (within + among countries) + experiments on important mechanisms? • bagging? • pollen supplementation? • warming treatment? • precipitation teatment? • etc!? • An important task for this workshop?

14. A holistic view: crop pollination as part of the landscape is the main strenght of this project

15. How is the surrounding landscape benefitting crop production? • Many examples on how landscape configuration, distance to and amount of (semi-)natural elements etc • affect pollinator diversity and abundance and therefore crop pollination and production • How about competition vs facilitation for pollinators among native flowering resources and crops? • Scale and distance matters, but little investigated • Applied knowledge: remove or enhance natural flower resources and on which scale?

16. Crop pollination and changing landscapes • Semi-natural elements rich on nesting and flower resources are getting scarcer throughout Europe • a bit slower in Norway, but cultivated landscapes are turning into forest or intensified

18. Practise I • Honey bees are used, but in varying degree depending on beekeeper abundance • Wild pollinators are relatively abundant • andplantations are relatively small • tunnels (raspberry) is a potential challenge for some pollinator species?

19. Practise II • Apple producers often remove dandelion and other (flowering) vegetation to avoid competiton for bees (and resources) • Free, J.B. (1968) Dandelion as a competitor to fruit trees for bee visits. Journal of Applied Ecology, 5, 169-177. • Also common to remove flowering resources within plantings of other fruits and berries

20. Scale-dependent effects of floral neighbourhood Hegland, S.J. (2014) Floral neighbourhood effects on pollination success in red clover are scale-dependent. Functional Ecology, in press

21. Scale-dependent effects of floral neighbourhood • Facilitation of visitation to red clover at small scale changing to competition at intermediate scale and facilitation again at larger scale • Methodologically challenge: measure flower abundance at different spatial scales • Also: one need precise hypothesis. • In this study only facilitation/ competition by density of similar couloured flowers Hegland, S.J. (2014) Floral neighbourhood effects on pollination success in red clover are scale-dependent. Functional Ecology, in press

22. Summing up • Norwegian Fjords: a potentially interesting natural climate laboratorium • in itself and in relation to other areas with distinct climate gradients • requires high quality study-design and thought-through experiments along climate gradient(s) • Both climate and landscapes are changing in these areas • both potentially positive and negative effects of climate • knowledge on climate change effects are scarce • knowledge on effects of management of surroundings and landscape change are scarce