Agricultural margins could enhance landscape connectivity for pollinating insects across the Central Valley of California, U.S.A.

One of the defining features of the Anthropocene is eroding ecosystem
services as a function of decreases in biodiversity and overall reductions
in the abundance of once-common organisms, including many insects that
play innumerable roles in natural communities and agricultural systems
that support human society. It is now clear that the preservation of
insects cannot rely solely on the legal protection of natural areas far
removed from the densest areas of human habitation. Instead, a critical
challenge moving forward is to intelligently manage areas that include
intensively farmed landscapes, such as the Central Valley of California.
Here we attempt to meet this challenge with a tool for modeling landscape
connectivity for insects (with pollinators in particular in mind) that
builds on available information including lethality of pesticides and
expert opinion on insect movement. Despite the massive fragmentation of
the Central Valley, we find that connectivity is possible, especially
utilizing the restoration or improvement of agricultural margins which (in
their summed-area) exceed natural areas. Finally, we highlight steps
moving forward and the great many knowledge gaps that could be addressed
in the field to improve future iterations of our modeling approach.