First use of participatory Bayesian modeling to study habitat management at multiple scales for biological pest control

Abstract

Habitat management is increasingly considered as a promising approach to favor the ecosystem service of biological control by enhancing natural enemies. However, habitat management, whether at local or landscape scale, remains very uncertain for farmers. Interactions between ecological processes and agricultural practices are indeed uncertain and site-specific, which makes implementation difficult. Thus, prospecting innovations based on habitat management may benefit from integrating local stakeholders and their knowledge. Our objective is to explore with both local and scientific stakeholders how they perceive agricultural practices, ecological processes, and services related to biological pest control and habitat management. We conducted a participatory Bayesian Network modeling approach with five stakeholders in Southwest France around apple orchard cultivation. We co-constructed such Bayesian Networks based on participants' knowledge. We explored scenarios favoring natural enemies and habitat manipulation with each participant's Bayesian Network. We compared how different stakeholders perceive the impact of each scenario on the biological control ecosystem service. Our results indicate that a landscape with a high proportion of seminatural habitats does not translate into significant biological control for most participants even though some stakeholders perceive a significant impact on generalist predators' activity within orchards. For these local stakeholders, habitat management at the orchard level such as inter-row vegetation seems currently more promising than at the landscape scale. Here, we show for the first time that the use of Bayesian modeling in a participatory manner can give precious insights into the most promising perspectives on habitat management at different scales. These different local perspectives suggest in particular that further dialogue between ecologists and local stakeholders should be sought about inter-row habitat management as the most promising practice to foster biological pest control and other ecosystem services.

Governance of Ecosystem Services in Agroecology: When Coordination is Needed but Difficult to Achieve

“…The perception of local farmers that SNH favor the incidence of pests rather than natural enemies may explain the generally negative opinion about the pest control potential of this agroecological practice. Our simulations show that different types of stakeholders currently share the view that including SNH in landscape composition does not translate into significant ecosystem services for them [40,41]. Thus, the current cognitive representations indicate a very low level of perceived interdependency between potential providers and beneficiaries.…”

“…We applied this conceptual framework to analyze data collected during a participatory modelling process conducted from 2014 to 2017, which aimed at exploring the potential of a landscape-based biological pest control approach with key local stakeholders. Previous publications presented some of the methods that were developed and the results obtained from this participatory process [35,40,41]. For the current study, we adopted a broader stance to draw lessons from the whole process.…”

“…Simulations were conducted with the stakeholders to explore the potential of landscape-based biological pest control [40], as well as alternative pest control strategies. More details about the Bayesian network model and results of each scenario are presented in references [40,41]. Figure 2 summarizes the main components of the socio-ecological system using our conceptual framework [24].…”

Participatory Bayesian modelling for sustainable and efficient river restoration projects: Feedback from the case study of the Gave de Pau River, Hautes‐Pyrénées, France

“…In Shenton, Hart, and Chan (2014) and Glendining and Pollino (2012), the authors deal more specifically with the problem of river restoration. These works are most often based on the use of simple BNs (Chan, Ross, Hoverman, & Powell, 2010;Salliou, Vialatte, Monteil, & Barnaud, 2019;Stewart-Koster et al, 2010;Zorrilla et al, 2010), but also, sometimes, dynamic or object-oriented (Molina, Bromley, Bromley, García-Aróstegui, Sullivan, & Benavente, 2010). In Salliou, Barnaud, Vialatte, and Monteil (2017), the authors use BNs to address problems of ambiguity and to try to explain the points of divergence between stakeholders in order to better solve them later on.…”

“…Once the participants left the process, it turned out very difficult to have their feedback to understand the reasons explaining their choice. However, some hypotheses concerning the causes can be explored based on similar studies (Salliou et al, 2019;Videira et al, 2003;Voinov & Bousquet, 2010).…”