Biodiversity, new tools for farmers and scientists

Dialogue between farmers and scientists has been shown to be a promising way of improving farmland biodiversity in the recent study “Average species richness and farm ‘uniqueness’”.

This study, partly conducted under the EU BioBio project, explored how scientists offering agricultural consultancy or biodiversity assessments can use metrics to contribute to this dialogue. Metrics provide quantitative information about biodiversity that farmers can use as part of their management decisions. During the study, the researchers looked at several farms and produced a range of data about their biodiversity. From this, the researchers identified two different measures as criteria for the metrics: ‘average richness’ (the variety of species found on each farm) and ‘farm uniqueness’ (a farm’s contribution to total species richness). Using these measures with farmers aims to improve farm management in terms of biodiversity.

See the main results here and the full study here.