Location: Hydrology and Remote Sensing Laboratory
Project Number: 8042-66000-002-007-S
Project Type: Non-Assistance Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Jun 1, 2024
End Date: Aug 31, 2026
Objective:
Soybeans are one of the highest produced crops in the United States, and while soybeans are auto-pollinating, both soybean productivity and yield can increase substantially with the inclusion of wild bee pollinators habitat and management, in turn not only increasing the efficiency of agricultural landscapes but also creating a more sustainable and reliable food system around the world. This collaboration with Ohio State University is required for field in-situ data for validation of the Crop Pollination InVEST model used to estimate the pollination ecosystem services for conservation lands. This calibration will primarily concentrate on the pollinator abundance aspect of the InVEST model outputs and secondarily on soybean yield and pollinator supply. In particular, this agreement's objective are: 1) analyze different easement habitats capabilities as patch resources for native pollination services; 2) estimate the most prominent genera and richness of native bees for conservation land pollination services; and 3) analyze pollen for spatial distribution of native pollinator foraging activity.
Approach:
HRSL will collect pollinator presence samples in field on active CRP and/or other USDA easement programs’ conservation land and conjoining soybean fields using sweep nets, bee pans, blue vane traps. Then, HRSL will identify pollinator field samples by genera at minimum and compare conservation habitat types in terms of preference of native bee species. HRSL will also identify pollen from pollinator samples. Using the in-situ data, HRSL will determine the prevalence of soybean foraging for native bees in different conservation lands and analyze the spatial distribution of native bee abundance and soybean pollen to estimate the pollination service impact of private conservation lands adjacent, near, and integrated into soybean fields.
