Functional diversity and mowing regime of flower strips as tools to support pollinators and to suppress weeds
type: CreativeWork
description: Intensification of agriculture during past decades is one of the causes of biodiversity declines. Ecological intensification has been proposed as a more sustainable alternative of intensive agriculture that should be able to fulfill worldwide demands of food, by optimizing ecosystem functions and services and reducing environmental impacts. One way to restore ecosystem functions and services in arable fields is creating flower strips in field margins. These flower strips enable wild plant communities to thrive and provide food and shelter to associated fauna. It is often suggested that increasing plant functional diversity could be a tool to optimize ecosystem functioning and ecosystem service delivery, and it could thus be a goal for the creation and management of flower strips. An example of ecosystem functioning studied in this manuscript, is the mutualistic interaction between plants and pollinators. To convince European farmers to implement flower strips, they are included in the subsidized Agri-Environment Schemes. However, there exists no clear appraisal of the pros and cons of flower strips for farmers. By systematically reviewing the literature for pros and cons, we found that most studies concerned agronomical and ecological processes related to flower strips, but few or no studies were dedicated to the social and economic aspects. Furthermore, pollination appears to be an important pro, and weed infestation a possible con, depending on flower strip creation and management. We focused on these two examples in the further study. We investigated (1) whether the increase of plant functional diversity can be used as tool to optimize flower strips for pollinators, (2) whether forb competition and adapting timing and frequency of mowing can be used as tools to limit weeds in flower strips, and (3) whether flower strips perform equally in supporting pollinators as the natural habitat for which they are thought to be a surrogate. To use functional diversity as a t…
abstract: Intensification of agriculture during past decades is one of the causes of biodiversity declines. Ecological intensification has been proposed as a more sustainable alternative of intensive agriculture that should be able to fulfill worldwide demands of food, by optimizing ecosystem functions and services and reducing environmental impacts. One way to restore ecosystem functions and services in arable fields is creating flower strips in field margins. These flower strips enable wild plant communities to thrive and provide food and shelter to associated fauna. It is often suggested that increasing plant functional diversity could be a tool to optimize ecosystem functioning and ecosystem service delivery, and it could thus be a goal for the creation and management of flower strips. An example of ecosystem functioning studied in this manuscript, is the mutualistic interaction between plants and pollinators. To convince European farmers to implement flower strips, they are included in the subsidized Agri-Environment Schemes. However, there exists no clear appraisal of the pros and cons of flower strips for farmers. By systematically reviewing the literature for pros and cons, we found that most studies concerned agronomical and ecological processes related to flower strips, but few or no studies were dedicated to the social and economic aspects. Furthermore, pollination appears to be an important pro, and weed infestation a possible con, depending on flower strip creation and management. We focused on these two examples in the further study. We investigated (1) whether the increase of plant functional diversity can be used as tool to optimize flower strips for pollinators, (2) whether forb competition and adapting timing and frequency of mowing can be used as tools to limit weeds in flower strips, and (3) whether flower strips perform equally in supporting pollinators as the natural habitat for which they are thought to be a surrogate. To use functional diversity as a t…
author: Uyttenbroeck, Roel
language: en
keywords: pollinators, ecosystem services, ecosystem functioning, plant-pollinator networks, weeds, Cirsium arvense, hay meadows, agri-environment schemes, wildflower strips, Life sciences, Environmental sciences & ecology, Agriculture & agronomy, Sciences du vivant, Sciences de l’environnement & écologie, Agriculture & agronomie
license: http://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_abf2
date published: 2017-09-04
date modified: 2026-07-24T02:49:37Z
provider: Université de Liège
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: ULiège - Université de Liège