{"id":{"repo_id":"cambridge","oai_identifier":"oai:www.repository.cam.ac.uk:1810/371773"},"canonical_url":"https://search.dev.ndltd.org/etd/cambridge/oai:www.repository.cam.ac.uk:1810/371773","repository":{"repo_id":"cambridge","name":"Cambridge University","base_url":"https://api.repository.cam.ac.uk/server/oai/request"},"display":{"title":"Oil Palm’s Sustainable Future: The influence of within-plantation management practices on yield and pollinator diversity in oil palm","abstract":"Identifying and implementing agricultural management interventions that support biodiversity and associated ecosystem services represents a key way that agricultural production can be made more sustainable. Oil palm, a rapidly expanding perennial crop of global importance, presents a model system to explore how sustainable agricultural management practices affect biodiversity, ecosystem services, and yield. This is because it can develop significant structural complexity and relatively high levels of biodiversity over its 25–30-year lifespan. In this thesis, I assess the impacts of management practices on structural complexity, biodiversity, associated ecosystem services and yield in oil palm, by mapping current research on oil palm management practices, testing how management practices manipulating structural heterogeneity influence yield across varying rainfall conditions, and examining the impacts of local landscape features on pollinator abundance and resilience. The work presented in this thesis was highly collaborative and supported by partnerships between different universities globally, nonprofit organizations, smallholder managers, and industry research institutions. The first data chapter is a systematic map of oil palm management interventions and their outcomes, in which I identified key knowledge clusters and gaps in the literature base. To create this map, I searched for studies on within-plantation oil palm management practices at the cultivation stage and catalogued metadata from these studies related to study design, geographic location, intervention tested, and outcome explored. I found few studies testing landscape heterogeneity interventions and biodiversity in oil palm landscapes, or research addressing these outcomes in tandem with climate change resilience. In the second data chapter, I analyzed rainfall and oil palm yield data, including data during an El Niño period, to assess how varying rainfall, including extreme weather events, impacts palm oil production. I found that increased rainfall, especially extreme rainfall events, during the period of two to five months before harvest negatively impacted oil palm yield, although there was additional site-scale variation that also had substantial effects. In the third data chapter, I used data from a large-scale, long-term experiment that manipulated understory vegetation complexity in industrial oil palm plantations in Riau, Indonesia, to analyze whether enhancing understory complexity in mature oil palm plantations can influence yield in varying rainfall conditions, as well as impact harvest duration and difficulty. My results showed that, while enhanced understory complexity did not mitigate any impacts of rainfall on yield, it also had no negative impact on yield and did not impact harvest duration. This indicates that practices enhancing structural complexity in the understory can support biodiversity and associated ecosystem functioning without a cost to yield or increase in harvest duration. My final data chapter investigated the effect of structural complexity on pollinator abundance and diversity in oil palm smallholdings. Although higher vegetation complexity did not lead to increased pollinator diversity, increased canopy closure was associated with increased pollinator abundance. A wide variety of potential pollinators were found, but in low abundances, indicating potentially low resilience of pollination services within these smallholdings. My thesis identified key knowledge gaps in the oil palm literature that later chapters helped to address, including the resilience of oil palm yield in the face of climate change, experimental testing of the effectiveness of management interventions, and examining the effects of landscape heterogeneity on biodiversity in oil palm landscapes. Taken together, my results support the potential for developing management interventions in oil palm that enhance structural heterogeneity, and increase biodiversity and ecosystem services, without negatively impacting yield or harvest duration, even during periods of variable rainfall. These results lead to several management implications, including support for more relaxed understory management and maintaining mature palm areas within existing plantations during replanting. My results have implications for management recommendations and may also inform oil palm sustainability guidelines, including the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) standards. They do this by indicating interventions that provide high yields while minimizing negative environmental impacts, promoting greater sustainability and resilience against climate fluctuation, and supporting higher biodiversity in a major agricultural landscape.","abstract_html":"Identifying and implementing agricultural management interventions that support biodiversity and associated ecosystem services represents a key way that agricultural production can be made more sustainable. Oil palm, a rapidly expanding perennial crop of global importance, presents a model system to explore how sustainable agricultural management practices affect biodiversity, ecosystem services, and yield. This is because it can develop significant structural complexity and relatively high levels of biodiversity over its 25–30-year lifespan. In this thesis, I assess the impacts of management practices on structural complexity, biodiversity, associated ecosystem services and yield in oil palm, by mapping current research on oil palm management practices, testing how management practices manipulating structural heterogeneity influence yield across varying rainfall conditions, and examining the impacts of local landscape features on pollinator abundance and resilience. The work presented in this thesis was highly collaborative and supported by partnerships between different universities globally, nonprofit organizations, smallholder managers, and industry research institutions. The first data chapter is a systematic map of oil palm management interventions and their outcomes, in which I identified key knowledge clusters and gaps in the literature base. To create this map, I searched for studies on within-plantation oil palm management practices at the cultivation stage and catalogued metadata from these studies related to study design, geographic location, intervention tested, and outcome explored. I found few studies testing landscape heterogeneity interventions and biodiversity in oil palm landscapes, or research addressing these outcomes in tandem with climate change resilience. In the second data chapter, I analyzed rainfall and oil palm yield data, including data during an El Niño period, to assess how varying rainfall, including extreme weather events, impacts palm oil production. I found that increased rainfall, especially extreme rainfall events, during the period of two to five months before harvest negatively impacted oil palm yield, although there was additional site-scale variation that also had substantial effects. In the third data chapter, I used data from a large-scale, long-term experiment that manipulated understory vegetation complexity in industrial oil palm plantations in Riau, Indonesia, to analyze whether enhancing understory complexity in mature oil palm plantations can influence yield in varying rainfall conditions, as well as impact harvest duration and difficulty. My results showed that, while enhanced understory complexity did not mitigate any impacts of rainfall on yield, it also had no negative impact on yield and did not impact harvest duration. This indicates that practices enhancing structural complexity in the understory can support biodiversity and associated ecosystem functioning without a cost to yield or increase in harvest duration. My final data chapter investigated the effect of structural complexity on pollinator abundance and diversity in oil palm smallholdings. Although higher vegetation complexity did not lead to increased pollinator diversity, increased canopy closure was associated with increased pollinator abundance. A wide variety of potential pollinators were found, but in low abundances, indicating potentially low resilience of pollination services within these smallholdings. My thesis identified key knowledge gaps in the oil palm literature that later chapters helped to address, including the resilience of oil palm yield in the face of climate change, experimental testing of the effectiveness of management interventions, and examining the effects of landscape heterogeneity on biodiversity in oil palm landscapes. Taken together, my results support the potential for developing management interventions in oil palm that enhance structural heterogeneity, and increase biodiversity and ecosystem services, without negatively impacting yield or harvest duration, even during periods of variable rainfall. These results lead to several management implications, including support for more relaxed understory management and maintaining mature palm areas within existing plantations during replanting. My results have implications for management recommendations and may also inform oil palm sustainability guidelines, including the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) standards. They do this by indicating interventions that provide high yields while minimizing negative environmental impacts, promoting greater sustainability and resilience against climate fluctuation, and supporting higher biodiversity in a major agricultural landscape.","abstract_has_math":false,"creators":["Popkin, Megan"],"institution":"University of Cambridge","degree_name":null,"degree_level":"Doctoral","degree_discipline":null,"degree_department":null,"school":null,"contributors":[],"advisors":["Turner, Edgar"],"committee_chairs":[],"committee_members":[],"year":2024,"date_issued":"2024-05-17","date_published":"2024-05-17","updated_at":"2026-07-24T01:33:28Z","subjects":["oil palm","palm oil","agricultural management","agricultural yield","sustainable agriculture","climate change","extreme weather events","smallholders","pollinators","biodiversity","Elaeidobius kamerunicus Faust","Elaeis guineensis","structural heterogeneity"],"languages":["eng"],"rights":[],"rights_urls":["https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/9d733c66-f4dd-478a-8a6c-578a56f0fdef/download","https://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved/"],"identifier_entries":[]},"links":{"outbound_url":"https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.110858","outbound_label":"DOI","outbound_source":"dc:identifier.doi"},"metadata_groups":[{"id":"people","label":"People","entries":[{"key":"dc:contributor.advisor","label":"Advisor","values":["Turner, Edgar"]},{"key":"dc:creator","label":"Author","values":["Popkin, Megan"]}]},{"id":"academic_context","label":"Academic Context","entries":[{"key":"dc:date.issued","label":"Date","values":["2024-05-17"]},{"key":"dc:publisher.institution","label":"Dc Publisher Institution","values":["University of Cambridge"]},{"key":"dc:relation.isreferencedby.uri","label":"Dc Relation Isreferencedby URI","values":["https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/371773"]},{"key":"dc:type","label":"Dc Type","values":["Thesis"]},{"key":"dc:type.qualificationlevel","label":"Dc Type Qualificationlevel","values":["Doctoral"]}]},{"id":"subjects_keywords","label":"Subjects and Keywords","entries":[{"key":"dc:subject","label":"Dc Subject","values":["oil palm","palm oil","agricultural management","agricultural yield","sustainable agriculture","climate change","extreme weather events","smallholders","pollinators","biodiversity","Elaeidobius kamerunicus Faust","Elaeis guineensis","structural heterogeneity"]}]},{"id":"language_rights","label":"Language and Rights","entries":[{"key":"dc:language","label":"Dc Language","values":["eng"]},{"key":"dc:rights","label":"Dc Rights","values":["https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/9d733c66-f4dd-478a-8a6c-578a56f0fdef/download","https://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved/"]}]},{"id":"identifiers","label":"Identifiers","entries":[{"key":"dc:identifier.doi","label":"DOI","values":["https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.110858"]},{"key":"dc:identifier.uri","label":"Identifier URI","values":["https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/133c380f-aa0c-48e5-ba7d-ccaa33b9d583/download"]}]},{"id":"additional","label":"Additional Metadata","entries":[{"key":"dc:description.abstract","label":"Abstract","values":["Identifying and implementing agricultural management interventions that support biodiversity and associated ecosystem services represents a key way that agricultural production can be made more sustainable. Oil palm, a rapidly expanding perennial crop of global importance, presents a model system to explore how sustainable agricultural management practices affect biodiversity, ecosystem services, and yield. This is because it can develop significant structural complexity and relatively high levels of biodiversity over its 25–30-year lifespan. In this thesis, I assess the impacts of management practices on structural complexity, biodiversity, associated ecosystem services and yield in oil palm, by mapping current research on oil palm management practices, testing how management practices manipulating structural heterogeneity influence yield across varying rainfall conditions, and examining the impacts of local landscape features on pollinator abundance and resilience. The work presented in this thesis was highly collaborative and supported by partnerships between different universities globally, nonprofit organizations, smallholder managers, and industry research institutions. The first data chapter is a systematic map of oil palm management interventions and their outcomes, in which I identified key knowledge clusters and gaps in the literature base. To create this map, I searched for studies on within-plantation oil palm management practices at the cultivation stage and catalogued metadata from these studies related to study design, geographic location, intervention tested, and outcome explored. I found few studies testing landscape heterogeneity interventions and biodiversity in oil palm landscapes, or research addressing these outcomes in tandem with climate change resilience. In the second data chapter, I analyzed rainfall and oil palm yield data, including data during an El Niño period, to assess how varying rainfall, including extreme weather events, impacts palm oil production. I found that increased rainfall, especially extreme rainfall events, during the period of two to five months before harvest negatively impacted oil palm yield, although there was additional site-scale variation that also had substantial effects. In the third data chapter, I used data from a large-scale, long-term experiment that manipulated understory vegetation complexity in industrial oil palm plantations in Riau, Indonesia, to analyze whether enhancing understory complexity in mature oil palm plantations can influence yield in varying rainfall conditions, as well as impact harvest duration and difficulty. My results showed that, while enhanced understory complexity did not mitigate any impacts of rainfall on yield, it also had no negative impact on yield and did not impact harvest duration. This indicates that practices enhancing structural complexity in the understory can support biodiversity and associated ecosystem functioning without a cost to yield or increase in harvest duration. My final data chapter investigated the effect of structural complexity on pollinator abundance and diversity in oil palm smallholdings. Although higher vegetation complexity did not lead to increased pollinator diversity, increased canopy closure was associated with increased pollinator abundance. A wide variety of potential pollinators were found, but in low abundances, indicating potentially low resilience of pollination services within these smallholdings. My thesis identified key knowledge gaps in the oil palm literature that later chapters helped to address, including the resilience of oil palm yield in the face of climate change, experimental testing of the effectiveness of management interventions, and examining the effects of landscape heterogeneity on biodiversity in oil palm landscapes. Taken together, my results support the potential for developing management interventions in oil palm that enhance structural heterogeneity, and increase biodiversity and ecosystem services, without negatively impacting yield or harvest duration, even during periods of variable rainfall. These results lead to several management implications, including support for more relaxed understory management and maintaining mature palm areas within existing plantations during replanting. My results have implications for management recommendations and may also inform oil palm sustainability guidelines, including the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) standards. They do this by indicating interventions that provide high yields while minimizing negative environmental impacts, promoting greater sustainability and resilience against climate fluctuation, and supporting higher biodiversity in a major agricultural landscape."]},{"key":"dc:format.checksum.md5","label":"Dc Format Checksum Md5","values":["f537a06208806f500187acd871ee41e1","87eda9de84448d1f82354d60eee3eb5f"]},{"key":"dc:title","label":"Title","values":["Oil Palm’s Sustainable Future: The influence of within-plantation management practices on yield and pollinator diversity in oil palm"]}]}],"canonical_facts":{"dc:contributor.advisor":["Turner, Edgar"],"dc:creator":["Popkin, Megan"],"dc:date.issued":["2024-05-17"],"dc:description.abstract":["Identifying and implementing agricultural management interventions that support biodiversity and associated ecosystem services represents a key way that agricultural production can be made more sustainable. Oil palm, a rapidly expanding perennial crop of global importance, presents a model system to explore how sustainable agricultural management practices affect biodiversity, ecosystem services, and yield. This is because it can develop significant structural complexity and relatively high levels of biodiversity over its 25–30-year lifespan. In this thesis, I assess the impacts of management practices on structural complexity, biodiversity, associated ecosystem services and yield in oil palm, by mapping current research on oil palm management practices, testing how management practices manipulating structural heterogeneity influence yield across varying rainfall conditions, and examining the impacts of local landscape features on pollinator abundance and resilience. The work presented in this thesis was highly collaborative and supported by partnerships between different universities globally, nonprofit organizations, smallholder managers, and industry research institutions. The first data chapter is a systematic map of oil palm management interventions and their outcomes, in which I identified key knowledge clusters and gaps in the literature base. To create this map, I searched for studies on within-plantation oil palm management practices at the cultivation stage and catalogued metadata from these studies related to study design, geographic location, intervention tested, and outcome explored. I found few studies testing landscape heterogeneity interventions and biodiversity in oil palm landscapes, or research addressing these outcomes in tandem with climate change resilience. In the second data chapter, I analyzed rainfall and oil palm yield data, including data during an El Niño period, to assess how varying rainfall, including extreme weather events, impacts palm oil production. I found that increased rainfall, especially extreme rainfall events, during the period of two to five months before harvest negatively impacted oil palm yield, although there was additional site-scale variation that also had substantial effects. In the third data chapter, I used data from a large-scale, long-term experiment that manipulated understory vegetation complexity in industrial oil palm plantations in Riau, Indonesia, to analyze whether enhancing understory complexity in mature oil palm plantations can influence yield in varying rainfall conditions, as well as impact harvest duration and difficulty. My results showed that, while enhanced understory complexity did not mitigate any impacts of rainfall on yield, it also had no negative impact on yield and did not impact harvest duration. This indicates that practices enhancing structural complexity in the understory can support biodiversity and associated ecosystem functioning without a cost to yield or increase in harvest duration. My final data chapter investigated the effect of structural complexity on pollinator abundance and diversity in oil palm smallholdings. Although higher vegetation complexity did not lead to increased pollinator diversity, increased canopy closure was associated with increased pollinator abundance. A wide variety of potential pollinators were found, but in low abundances, indicating potentially low resilience of pollination services within these smallholdings. My thesis identified key knowledge gaps in the oil palm literature that later chapters helped to address, including the resilience of oil palm yield in the face of climate change, experimental testing of the effectiveness of management interventions, and examining the effects of landscape heterogeneity on biodiversity in oil palm landscapes. Taken together, my results support the potential for developing management interventions in oil palm that enhance structural heterogeneity, and increase biodiversity and ecosystem services, without negatively impacting yield or harvest duration, even during periods of variable rainfall. These results lead to several management implications, including support for more relaxed understory management and maintaining mature palm areas within existing plantations during replanting. My results have implications for management recommendations and may also inform oil palm sustainability guidelines, including the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) standards. They do this by indicating interventions that provide high yields while minimizing negative environmental impacts, promoting greater sustainability and resilience against climate fluctuation, and supporting higher biodiversity in a major agricultural landscape."],"dc:format.checksum.md5":["f537a06208806f500187acd871ee41e1","87eda9de84448d1f82354d60eee3eb5f"],"dc:identifier.doi":["https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.110858"],"dc:identifier.uri":["https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/133c380f-aa0c-48e5-ba7d-ccaa33b9d583/download"],"dc:language":["eng"],"dc:publisher.institution":["University of Cambridge"],"dc:relation.isreferencedby.uri":["https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/371773"],"dc:rights":["https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/9d733c66-f4dd-478a-8a6c-578a56f0fdef/download","https://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved/"],"dc:subject":["oil palm","palm oil","agricultural management","agricultural yield","sustainable agriculture","climate change","extreme weather events","smallholders","pollinators","biodiversity","Elaeidobius kamerunicus Faust","Elaeis guineensis","structural heterogeneity"],"dc:title":["Oil Palm’s Sustainable Future: The influence of within-plantation management practices on yield and pollinator diversity in oil palm"],"dc:type":["Thesis"],"dc:type.qualificationlevel":["Doctoral"]},"updated_at":"2026-07-24T01:33:28Z"}