Science Spin November 2007

Irish countryside species in decline

By Sean Duke

Biodiversity. Yawn. What is it? Who cares? Another environmental fad? Something that we don't have to pay much attention to? A bit like global warming, the ozone layer, and the rain forests? Too vague, and far too boring. Nothing to see here, time to switch off.

Does this thought process feel familiar?

If so, perhaps you should know that the loss of biodiversity, meaning the loss of species of plants and animals, could ultimately impact on human health and well-being. Paying attention now? Good.

Alarmingly, many experts believe that we are losing species fast, and that there is a danger that we could be fast approaching some "tipping point" where, even if we introduce last ditch measures, it won't bring our ecology back to equilibrium. That could mean, for example, that we end up with sterile soils, where no crops will grow, out of control weather systems, pollution of our seas, global warming, and serious floods. There are even worse scenarios where the planet could become almost unfit for human life.

"There is certainly a risk if you push biological systems to extremes like that you actually get extremely nasty, unpleasant things happening, and risking human health and everything else," said Dr Gordon Purvis, Department of Environmental Resource Management, UCD, who is at the forefront of biodiversity research in Ireland.

Background

Biodiversity is a relatively new issue in science, with its profile increasing markedly only after the 1992 Rio Convention. Then all European states, and many other nations (with the notable exception of the USA) signed up to the principle that they should do what they can to protect the environment from human activities that negatively affected it.

"There was this big concern that we had reached this 'tipping point' and biodiversity was being so damaged that we were damaging the natural world to a point where it might not be recoverable, recalled Dr Purvis.

"That convention in 1992 put an official seal or stamp on this international concern, but much more importantly a commitment to try and do something about it by essentially a decision to integrate concern about biodiversity into every sector so that meant every area of human activity had to consider its likely impact on biodiversity - it became a kind of formalised process. So, with in Europe produced a whole series of biodiversity action plans, one of which is a BAP (Biodiversity Action Plan) one of which was for agriculture and the knock on from that was that each individual country produced their own variant."

"The interesting thing about '92 was that it introduced the idea of a target date to halt the international loss of biodiversity. This has been a kind of albatross hanging around everyone's neck since because there is a commitment to halt this perceived loss of biodiversity by 2010, which is very close now. It seemed from the politicians' point of view, a safe enough target to push it off into the future. The reality though is that it has crept up very quickly, but it is still an issue, it hasn't gone away, and now, I guess there will be some revision and extension of that target, it is a prominent concern now".

Ireland

In Ireland the issue of biodiversity much necessarily revolve around agriculture, and what agriculture is doing, as Ireland remains a predominantly agricultural landscape. At European level post-Rio, the policy makers began to try and push agriculture into a more environmentally friendly direction. This was done through the introduction of the agri-environmental schemes, which became a central plank in rural development policy.

The recent reform of the CAP (Common Agricultural Policy) meant a shift in emphasis in agriculture towards environmental concerns and protection - to the idea of multi-function agriculture. Over 60 per cent of the Irish landscape is a farming landscape, so farmers, and farming practice had to be at the centre of whatever was done regarding biodiversity.

Dr Purvis said that when considering Irish biodiversity, it is important to remember that there is no such thing as totally 'natural' vegetation in Ireland - it is all influenced by humans in one way or another. Though there are important high quality habitats that are semi-natural, such as the Oak remnants in Wicklow and Kerry, Dr Purvis and his colleagues decided to focus their research efforts on the farmed landscape, as whatever was going on here, given its extent, was going to have the most impact on biodiversity.

Baseline

One of the problems facing anyone that wishes to study changes in biodiversity over time in Ireland is that the records, going back, are poor. There just isn't the history of record keeping of flora and fauna species, and the changes to them over time, as there would be in other countries, such as the UK, where records exist going back quite a long time.

Researchers have, however, belatedly started to gather information on biodiversity here, and, for example, there is a countryside bird survey in Ireland that in recent years has started to gather information on biodiversity, and that has shown a decline in a lot of different bird populations. The problem for birds is that large open, arable fields, which cover a lot of Ireland, will benefit some arable specialist birds, but not most birds.

It has been recognised that what biodiversity researchers in Ireland really need is "baseline" information - that is something against which change can be compared. Ireland is only starting to generate baseline data, and typically this takes the form of identifying species that are important in terms of the general health of biodiversity in an area, and watching whether there is any change in this species over time.

It is not good enough to simply follow what has been done in the UK, or elsewhere, said Dr Purvis, as Ireland's geography, topography and the nature of its farming is different. "I mean the Irish landscape is quite, quite different from quite a lot of the UK, it would be similar to western parts of Britain like Wales, for instance, small fields. Across the east of England would be totally different, much more arable farming base," said Dr Purvis.

Ag-Biota

Dr Purvis and his colleagues wanted to develop a national expertise in bio-diversity research within the context of modern agriculture. That was the concept behind a proposal that was submitted to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) called Ag-Biota, which received funding. The project, was based in UCD and funded by the EPA for five years, rather than the usual three, which indicated the amount of work involved.

The work was to focus on the farmed landscape, rather than the special areas, such as the Oak remnants. The project represented a massive task, to build a base from which biodiversity research could be done in Ireland. Its work, which began in 2001, will be completed in November this year, after an extension was granted by the funding body.

"The extension was done because we ended up doing an awful lot more work, having learnt what was important to monitor (at a small number of sites). We looked at four groups, birds, bees, aquatic invertebrates and parasitoid wasps, pretty obscure insects, but biologically they are very interesting. AG-BIOTA succeeded in identifying these four groups as key bio-indicator groups," said Dr Purvis.

Bio-indicators are species that reflect the health of biodiversity generally in an area. These are important, because it is far easier to monitor key bio-indicator species, than every single species in an ecosystem, which would be hugely costly and time consuming. Birds and bees are a good bio-indicator to sue as the public like them, and bees are important for pollination. Aquatic invertebrates are important because they can reflect water quality, or the lack of it, while parasitoid wasps are important biologically.

The next step for Dr Purvis and colleagues was to understand the relationships between the biological indicator groups, and farming practice. The kinds of questions that Dr Purvis wanted now to answer included: What kind of impact does changing land usage have on biodiversity? What is the likely effect on, for example, water quality, from a change in farm practice?

By finding the answers to these questions, those farm practices that are very damaging to water quality, for example, could be curtailed, while those with the opposite effect encouraged. This approach promises to provide, for the first time in Ireland, a means for policy makers to make informed decisions on how best to protect biodiversity, and balance that against the need to protect farming livelihoods.

Agri-Baseline

Much of the push for developing a means to measure impacts of farming practice on biodiversity is coming from the EU, said Dr Purvis. There has been an enormous amount of public money spent on agri-environmental schemes across Europe, and the EU is keen to see whether that has had a positive impact. Are taxpayers getting their money worth?

The focus is on creating of scientific "baselines" that can enable scientists to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of these agri-environmental schemes. This need formed the basis for the second major biodiversity research project in UCD, the Agri-Baseline. This project was funded by Ireland's Department of Agriculture.

Agri-Baseline was highly practical; it applied the knowledge gained from Ag-Biota on how to measure biodiversity to the real world. To do this, three regions -- Cork, Sligo and Offaly were chosen and 180 individual farms. These areas were chosen for the diversity of land usages, and as a reflection of the diversity of land usage in Ireland in general.

Agri-Baseline was to provide the means to check biodiversity on a continual rolling basis, and to do it in a way that is time-efficient, so it doesn't involve countingactual species. Dr Purvis and co. divided up areas in 10km² boxes, and applied standard methodologies. The key element sought was simplicity, to find a simpler way to measure biodiversity.

"There will always be a need to go back and check and validate that your relationships still exist, but it means you can sample much larger numbers of farms or regions of the country much more frequently if you can more simply measure things," said Dr Purvis. "Things relating to farming practice. How farming is changing."

AE-FOOTPRINT

The next step for Dr Purvis, after Ag-Biota, which developed ways to measure diversity, and Agri-Baseline, which sought to apply that knowledge on specific farms, was AE-FOOTPRINT. This EC supported scheme seeks to develop common methods, right across Europe to assess the environmental performance of agri-environmental schemes.

The EU wants to develop a standardised system to assess the effectiveness of agri-environmental schemes whether they were on the Great Hungarian Plain, the Finnish forests, or in the Irish 'Golden Vale'.

Dr Purvis and his group are among the researchers across Europe trying to work out - as the Irish representatives in the AE-FOOTPRINT project - how common standards can be draw up for very different countries, regions and localities.

"So you have this massive diversity of farming types, geography and biological conditions and policy differences and the challenge now is to develop a common method that can assess for any scheme, in any geographical region, in any agricultural context, the impact of agri-environmental policies, which are all very different."

"That's a real challenge and what this project has actually done is develop this idea of an agri-environmental (AE) footprint index, which is simply a way of describing the agri-environment in any context."

But, all the hard work is worth it, if only to prevent nature getting nasty.

This is a more extended version of an article that originally appeared in UCD Today.