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Drainage ditches, either seasonally flooded or permanent, are commonly found on intensively managed lowland farmland in the UK. They are potentially important for wetland biodiversity but, despite their ubiquity, information on their biodiversity and management in the wider countryside is scarce. We surveyed 175 ditches for their physical and chemical characteristics, spatial connectivity, plant communities and aquatic invertebrates in an area of intensively managed farmland in Oxfordshire, UK and collected information on ditch management from farmer interviews. Water depth and shade had a small impact on the diversity of plant and invertebrate communities in ditches. Increased shade over the ditch channel resulted in reduced taxonomic richness of both channel vegetation and aquatic invertebrates and channel vegetation cover was lower at shaded sites. Invertebrate taxonomic richness was higher when water was deeper. Spatial connectivity had no detectable impact on the aquatic invertebrate or plant communities found in ditches. The number of families within the orders Ephemeroptera, Plecoptera and Trichoptera (EPT), which contain many pollution-sensitive species, declined with decreasing pH of ditch water. As time since dredging increased, the number of EPT families increased in permanent ditches but decreased in temporary ditches. Whether or not a ditch was in an agri-environment scheme had little impact on the reported management regime or biodiversity value of the ditch. Measures for increasing the amount of water in ditches, by increasing the water depth or promoting retention of water in ditches, could increase the biodiversity value of ditches in agricultural land. Some temporary ditches for specialised species should be retained. Reducing the amount of shade over narrow ditches by managing adjacent hedgerows is also likely to increase the species diversity of plant and invertebrate communities within the ditch. We recommend that to preserve or enhance the biodiversity value of ditches, and improve their ecosystem service delivery, management prescriptions for hedgerows adjacent to ditches should differ from those aimed at hedgerows only.

1. Ecological intensification involves the incorporation of biodiversity-based ecosystem service management into farming systems in order to make crop production more sustainable and reduce reliance on anthropogenic inputs, including fertilizer and insecticides. 2. The benefits of effectively managing ecosystem services such as pollination and pest regulation for improved yields have been demonstrated in a number of studies, however, recent evidence indicates that these benefits interact with conventional agronomic inputs such as fertilizer and irrigation. Despite the important contribution of biodiversity-based ecosystem services to crop production their management is rarely considered in combination with more conventional agronomic inputs. 3. This study combines a number of complementary approaches to evaluate the impact of insect pollination on yield parameters of Brassica napus and how this interacts with a key agronomic input, fertilizer. We incorporate data from a flight cage trial and multiple field studies to quantify the relationships between yield parameters to determine whether insufficient insect pollination may limit crop yield. 4. We demonstrate that, by producing larger seeds and more pods, B. napus has the capacity to modulate investment across yield parameters and buffer sub-optimal inputs of fertilizer or pollination. However, only when fertilizer is not limiting can the crop benefit from insect pollination, with yield increases due to insect pollination only seen under high fertilizer application. 5. A nonlinear relationship between seed set per pod and yield per plant was found, with increases in seed set between 15 and 25 seeds per pod resulting in a consistent increase in crop yield. The capacity for the crop to compensate for lower seed set due to sub-optimal pollination is therefore limited. 6. Synthesis and applications. Oilseed rape has the capacity to compensate for suboptimal agronomic or ecosystem service inputs although this has limitations. Insect pollination can increase seed set and so there are production benefits to be gained through effective management of wild pollinators or by utilizing managed species. Our study demonstrates, however, that increased insect pollination cannot simply replace other inputs, and if resources such as fertilizer are limiting, then yield potential cannot be reached. We highlight the need to consider insect pollination as an agronomic input to be effectively managed in agricultural systems.

Nature conservation often depends on the behaviour of individuals, which can be driven by socio‐psychological factors such as a person's attitude, knowledge and identity. Despite extensive ecological research about pollinator declines, there has been almost no social research assessing the drivers of people's engagement in pollinator conservation. To address this gap, we used a large‐scale, online questionnaire in the United Kingdom, broadly framed around the Theory of Planned Behaviour. We received a total of 1,275 responses from a wide range of ages, incomes and education levels, despite a selection bias towards people with a pre‐existing interest in pollinators. A range of socio‐psychological factors predicted people's pollinator conservation actions and explained 45% of the variation. Respondents’ diversity of nature interactions and perceived behavioural control (feeling able to help pollinators) were consistently important predictors of people's pollinator conservation actions, whilst the importance of other socio‐psychological factors depended on the particular action. Notably, knowledge was far less important overall than people's perceptions and other socio‐psychological factors, highlighting a knowledge‐action gap. Further unexplained variation in people's behaviour could partly be due by structural and contextual factors, particularly regarding social norms around tidiness. From a practical perspective, our findings reveal three main insights. First, several simple, low‐cost pollinator conservation actions (reduced mowing, leaving areas unmown and creating patches of bare ground for ground‐nesting bees) are currently under‐utilised so should be priorities for pollinator conservation programmes. Second, strategies are needed to overcome reported practical barriers, for example by providing free resources (e.g. seeds of pollen‐ and nectar‐rich plants) and communicating simple beneficial actions that can be carried out with limited time, space and money. Third, knowledge is just one (relatively less important) factor that predicts pollinator conservation behaviour—other socio‐psychological factors provide potential pathways for increasing uptake, and structural and contextual limitations also need to be considered. In practice, this could be achieved by engaging, inspiring and empowering the public to help pollinators and to take responsibility for their local environment, for example through environmental education and community programmes facilitating public interest and involvement in the management of greenspace. A free Plain Language Summary can be found within the Supporting Information of this article. A free Plain Language Summary can be found within the Supporting Information of this article.

ContextMaximising insect pollination of mass-flowering crops is a widely-discussed approach to sustainable agriculture. Management actions can target landscape-scale semi-natural habitat, cropping patterns or field-scale features, but little is known about their relative effectiveness.ObjectiveTo test how landscape composition (area of mass-flowering crops and semi-natural habitat) and field-scale habitat (margins and hedges) affect pollinator species richness, abundance, and pollen deposition within crop fields.MethodsWe surveyed all flower visitors (Diptera, Coleoptera and Hymenoptera) in oilseed rape fields and related them to landscape composition and field features. Flower visitors were classified as bees, non-bee pollinators and brassica specialists. Total pollen deposition by individual taxa was estimated using single visit pollen deposition on stigmas combined with insect abundance.ResultsThe area of mass-flowering crop had a negative effect on the species richness and abundance of bees in fields, but not other flower visitors. The area of semi-natural habitat in the surrounding landscape had a positive effect on bees, but was not as important as the area of mass-flowering crop. Taxonomic richness and abundance varied significantly between years for non-bee pollinators. Greater cover of mass-flowering crops surrounding fields had a negative effect on pollen deposition, but only when non-bee pollinator numbers were reduced.ConclusionsManagement choices that result in landscape homogenisation, such as large areas of mass-flowering crops, may reduce pollination services by reducing the numbers of bees visiting fields. Non-bee insect pollinators may buffer these landscape effects on pollen deposition, and management to support their populations should be considered.

1. Maintaining and protecting biodiversity for the future under changing environmental and sociopolitical conditions is a major challenge. Scenarios are used as decision-making aids for natural resource management at local to global scales. Scenarios are underutilised by conservationists at a local level, where they can be highly effective for anticipating change. 2. People's values and attitudes are crucial in determining the future, yet they are rarely placed at the centre of scenario exercises. Novel methods have been developed to fully integrate people's worldviews into scenario planning. The ethnographic futures framework focuses on how changes occur through human agency and how they will be felt by society in the future. The three horizons approach considers how different ideas and paradigms become more, or less, dominant in society over time. 3. Natural England (NE), the statutory adviser to the UK Government on the natural environment in England, carried out a scenario planning process using these novel approaches. The scenarios consider a wide range of global and local factors and investigate their impact upon the natural environment in England, to 2060. 4. A set of four contrasting scenarios was produced. Despite their differences, nature was always highly valued in some form; ultimately, the state of the natural environment was determined not by natural forces but by societal choice. 5. Synthesis and applications. Scenario planning allows the development of key visions for the future. These can be used to establish, and influence, the direction of future trends and their impacts on the natural environment, particularly in the context of a shifting basis for conservation policy that seeks to enhance ecological resilience. The scenarios are being used within NE to help local communities shape the future of their natural environment; this process can be utilised by governments or environmental agencies elsewhere. This study demonstrates that across a range of scenarios the future state of the natural environment is very much a matter of societal choice. Decisionmaking frameworks for environmental conservation must take proper account of ecological knowledge, societal values, foresight and complexity.

BackgroundLarge herbivores are often removed or reduced as part of vegetation restoration programmes, but the resultant increase in vegetation biomass and changes in vegetation structure may favour small mammals. Small mammals may have large impacts on plant community composition via granivory and sapling herbivory, and increased small mammal populations may reduce any benefits of large herbivore removal for highly preferred species. This study tested the impacts of small mammal herbivory, microsite characteristics and their interaction on growth and survival of three montane willow species with differing chemical compositions, Salix lapponum, S. myrsinifolia and S. arbuscula.MethodsIn two separate years, 1-year-old saplings were planted within a 180 ha, large-mammal scrub regeneration exclosure, and either experimentally protected from or exposed to small mammals (bank voles). Saplings were planted in one of two microsite treatments, vegetation mown (to mimic a grazed sward) or disturbed (all above- and below-ground competition removed), and monitored throughout the first year of growth.Key resultsApproximately 40 % of saplings planted out in each year were damaged by bank voles, but direct mortality due to damage was very low (<2 %). There were no strong species differences in susceptibility to vole damage. Microsite treatment had no impact on the proportion of saplings attacked, but in 2004 saplings in mown microsites were more severely damaged and had smaller increases in size than those in disturbed microsites. In 2003, saplings in mown microsites had smaller increases in stem diameter following attack than those in disturbed microsites.ConclusionsPlanting 1-year-old willow saplings into disturbed microsites may aid growth, reduce the severity of small mammal damage and improve recovery following sub-lethal small mammal damage. Restoration management of montane willow scrub should therefore consider manipulating the planting site to provide disturbed areas of soil.

Beekeepers are central to pollinator health. For policymakers and beekeeping organisations to develop widely accepted strategies to sustain honeybee populations alongside wild pollinators, a structured understanding of beekeeper motivations is essential. UK beekeepers are increasing in number, with diverse management styles despite calls for coordinated practice to manage honeybee health. Our Q methodology study in Cornwall, UK, indicated five beekeeping perspectives; conventional hobbyists, natural beekeepers, black bee farmers, new-conventional hobbyists and pragmatic bee farmers. Motivations can be shared across perspectives but trade-offs (notably between economic, social responsibility and ideological motivations) result in differing practices, some of which counter ‘official’ UK advice and may have implications for pollinator health and competition. Honeybee conservation emerged as a key motivator behind non-conventional practices, but wild pollinator conservation was not prioritised by most beekeepers in practice. Q methodology has the potential to facilitate non-hierarchical collaboration and conceptualisation of sustainable beekeeping, moving towards co-production of knowledge to influence policy.

In this article, I seek to locate the anthropology of social recovery within the work of memory. Following a decade of violent armed conflict in Sierra Leone, displaced youth in a Pentecostal church write and perform plays that are silent on the subject of the war, but renarrate it in the idiom of spiritual warfare against a subterranean demonic realm known as the Underworld. Ideas of the Underworld are part of a local retooling of the Pentecostal deliverance ministry to address Sierra Leone's years of war. Through their struggle against the Underworld, these Pentecostal youth reimagine Sierra Leone's war, reshaping experiences of violence that have shaped them and thereby transforming demonic memory into Pentecostal memory. Just as their own physical displacement is not an entirely negative condition, their displacement of violent memory is enabling rather than repressive. By \"forgetting\" the war as a direct realist account and reworking it through the lens of the Underworld, they use war itself to re-member their lives. Although they do not lose their memories of terror and violence, they learn to transform these in ways that allow them to create a moral life course in which they are much more than weak dependents.

Ditches (linear constructions which store and/or move water where humans prefer it to go), via irrigation, drainage, and power, have helped drive the development of human societies. Now, ditches and other linear channels, typically carrying water, are numerous and found on every continent. Their form varies widely with use, which includes land drainage, irrigation, transportation, and boundary marking. Ditches support and shape biogeochemical cycles, biotic communities, and human societies, at multiple spatiotemporal scales. However, ditches are frequently overlooked by researchers in many disciplines. Here, we review the largely unrecognized role that ditches play in environmental processes and human societies. The effects of ditches can be both positive (e.g., biodiversity refuges, water for food production, nutrient retention) and negative (e.g., greenhouse gas emissions, dispersal of pollutants). We call for future management to consider and enhance the multifunctional role that ditches can deliver at the landscape-scale. Ditches have many overlooked environmental and societal roles, including impact on biodiversity and pollution, and management strategies to enhance their multifunctional landscape-scale benefits are needed, according to a review of physical, biotic, chemical, and human factors.