Improving agrobiodiversity for resilient pest control services across landscapes

Increased agrobiodiversity is expected to provide more resilient ecosystem services in farmland, including biological control of agricultural pests.

Unfortunately, attempts to measure ecosystem resilience to disturbances, including those related to climate change and agricultural practices, are few.

The aim of IMPRESS is to improve our understanding of how agrobiodiversity at local to landscape scales contributes to the resilience of biological pest control and how we can best capitalize on this asset in different landscapes and climatic conditions.

IMPRESS will (i) provide empirical assessments of how natural enemy diversity contributes to resilience of biological pest control under different disturbance and diversification conditions, (ii) use this information to better understand the link between farm diversity and landscape complexity to optimize biological control resilience in future climate and land-use scenarios, and (iii) analyse governance and policy strategies currently shaping biological pest control across Europe and identify how to best adapt them to support biodiversity’s ability to provide pest control resilience.

IMPRESS will study cereal systems along a north-south gradient from Sweden, via Germany and Austria, to Italy.

IMPRESS will provide recommendations and tools for how to manage European agricultural landscapes to ensure resilient biological pest control, and will thus help prepare the agricultural sector in Europe for consequences of climate change.