Data for: The impacts of bioenergy pine plantation management practices on bee communities

1. Cultivation of bioenergy feedstocks is a growing land-use worldwide, yet we have a poor understanding of how bioenergy crop management practices affect biodiversity. This knowledge gap is particularly acute for candidate cellulosic bioenergy feedstocks, such as tree plantations, and for organisms that provide important ecosystem services, such as pollinators.
2. We examined bee communities in 83 sites across three states in the southeastern USA—Alabama, Florida and Georgia. We compared bee abundance and diversity in 66 pine plantation sites that reflect management with and without potential bioenergy feedstock production. At least three bioenergy feedstock production methods have been proposed for this region: 1) converting conventional timber stands to short-rotation bioenergy plantations; 2) harvesting feedstock by thinning conventional plantations; and 3) harvesting of woody debris residues after plantations have been clear-cut.
3. We found that bioenergy-associated management pra..., Study sites and strata
We sampled bee communities from 83 sites, including 66 pine plantations, 10 natural reference-condition sites (longleaf pine forest remnants) and 7 corn production sites, distributed across the U.S. states of Florida, Georgia and Alabama, which are expected to be key bioenergy states. The sites were the same as those sampled for birds in prior work (Gottlieb et al. 2017) and clustered into three geographic ‘strata’ that did not follow state lines (Table 1). In pine plantations, we focus on three key attributes that reflect potential management changes for bioenergy feedstock production: 1) younger plantation age; 2) plantation thinning; and 3) harvesting of ground debris after plantations are clear-cut. We examined the effect of plantation age on bee communities by comparing young, unthinned plantations 8-12 years old (simulating harvest-ready bioenergy plantations) to more mature plantations 24-25 years old that have already been thinned. We also compared bee com...,