The effects of flower-rich fields on biodiversity-based ecosystem services in the agricultural landscape.

The rising demand of agricultural products has led to agricultural intensification based on external inputs. Therefore, biodiversity and semi-natural habitats in agricultural landscapes have decreased in the last decades. Biodiversity-dependent ecosystem services like pollination and natural pest control are negatively affected by this development. Pollination provided by animals is of major importance to a wide variety of crops as well as the majority of wild plants. Furthermore, natural pest control gains importance due to increasingly frequent pesticide resistances. In Germany, Agri-environmental schemes (AES) aim to restore biodiversity in the agricultural landscape and to compensate at…