TITLE:
Towards a Modeling of the Impacts of Road Verge Management on the Pollination Service Using System Dynamics: A Case Study in France
AUTHORS:
Juan Pablo Ortega, Diana Daza-Gacha, Brunelle Marche, Mauricio Camargo, Clémence Chaudron, Frédérique Mayer, Juan Galvis
KEYWORDS:
Road Verges, Ecosystem Services, Mathematical Modeling, System Dynamics, Pollination
JOURNAL NAME:
Applied Mathematics,
Vol.14 No.5,
May
31,
2023
ABSTRACT: Several research studies have proven that eliciting and predicting the impact of human activity on ecosystem services will be crucial to support stakeholders’ awareness and to decide how to interact with the environment in a more sustainable manner. In this sense, the ecosystems known as road verges are particularly important because of their length and surface at an international scale, and their role in mitigating the damage done by roads. Plant pollination by insects is one of the most important ecosystem services. Because of its nature and the fact that they extend across a variety of landscapes, roadside can contribute to the maintenance of healthy ecosystems, under the condition of adapted management practices. This research is the first attempt to develop a System Dynamics-based aiming to estimate the ecological and economic impact of maintenance on the road verge pollination service in France. Maintenance strategies of road verges are simulated to compare their performance. The results show that there are ways to improve current maintenance strategies in terms of pollination value, but also that the model needs to consider other ecosystem services and synergistic effects that could further affect pollination to obtain more accurate estimations.