Estimating landscape structure effects on pollination for management of agricultural landscapes

Abstract The present study aims to examine the effects of habitat fragmentation to find a pattern of forest patches in agricultural landscapes that provide the highest pollination level. For this purpose, using simulated agricultural landscapes, including different forest proportions and degrees of fragmentation, pollination in different scenarios was estimated. We used landscape metrics to measure the landscape composition and configuration of each simulated landscape and estimated their statistical relationship with pollination. Our results showed that the effects of fragmentation on pollination were affected by two significant factors; 1- habitat amount and 2- small patches' capacity to supply pollination. Our results showed that when small patches' capacity in supplying pollination was low, fragmentation decreased pollination. When this capacity was very high, landscapes with a high degree of fragmentation showed higher levels of pollination. There was an exception for habitat amounts less than 0.1 of the entire landscape that increasing edge density, aggregation, and the number of patches, resulted in increasing pollination in all scenarios.