It has been a busy and fruitful summer for the BESTMAP consortium, and here is a summary of our latest achievements.
Four BESTMAP-related publications were published over the summer months, with contributions from our team members at the Chair of Computational Landscape Ecology:
– Gosal et al. (2022) investigated the accuracy of modelled changes in freshwater provision over time, finding that anthropogenic modifications contribute significantly to their inaccuracy;
– Roilo et al. (2022) modelled how agri-environment measures affect habitat suitability of farmland birds in the Mulde River Basin, Germany;
– Paulus et al. (2022) analysed how farmer’s adoption of agri-environmental schemes is influenced by landscape context and farm characteristics;
– Wittstock et al. (2022) explored the complexity of the decision-making process of farmers in deciding whether or not to apply agri-environmental schemes on their farm.
The BESTMAP consortium met in September for its yearly General Assembly, held at the Palacký University of Olomouc, Czech Republic. The General Assembly took place in conjunction with the BESTMAP summer school, where project partners introduced the participants to the different modelling approaches used to model policy impacts on ecosystem services and biodiversity.
Lastly, BESTMAP was also represented at the 6th European Congress of Conservation Biology which took place between in August in Prague, Czech Republic. Our PhD student Stephanie Roilo presented preliminary results on how context dependency influences the effectiveness of agri-environmental measures for farmland bird conservation.
To find out more about the project, check out the BESTMAP website here.