At the global scale, vineyards are usually managed intensively to optimize wine production without considering possible negative impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem services (ES) such as high soil erosion rates, degradation of soil fertility or contamination of groundwater. Winegrowers regulate competition for water and nutrients between the vines and inter‐row vegetation by tilling, mulching and/or herbicide application. Strategies for more sustainable viticulture recommend maintaining vegetation cover in inter‐rows, however, there is a lack of knowledge as to what extent this less intensive inter‐row management affects biodiversity and associated ES.We performed a hierarchical meta‐analysis to quantify the effects of extensive vineyard inter‐row vegetation management in comparison to more intensive management (like soil tillage or herbicide use) on biodiversity and ES from 74 studies covering four continents and 13 wine‐producing countries.Overall, extensive vegetation management increased above‐ and below‐ground biodiversity and ecosystem service provision by 20% in comparison to intensive management. Organic management together with management without herbicides showed a stronger positive effect on ES and biodiversity provision than inter‐row soil tillage.Soil loss parameters showed the largest positive response to inter‐row vegetation cover. The second highest positive response was observed for biodiversity variables, followed by carbon sequestration, pest control and soil fertility. We found no trade‐off between grape yield and quality vs. biodiversity or other ES. Synthesis and applications. Our meta‐analysis concludes that vegetation cover in inter‐rows contributes to biodiversity conservation and provides multiple ecosystem services. However, in drier climates grape yield might decrease without irrigation and careful vegetation management. Agri‐environmental policies should therefore focus on granting subsidies for the establishment of locally adapted diverse vegetation cover in vineyard inter‐rows. Future studies should focus on analysing the combined effects of local vineyard management and landscape composition and advance research in wine‐growing regions in Asia and in the southern hemisphere.
Citizen science (CS) has evolved over the past decades as a working method involving interested citizens in scientific research, for example by reporting observations, taking measurements or analysing data. In the past, research on animal behaviour has been benefitting from contributions of citizen scientists mainly in the field of ornithology but the full potential of CS in ecological and behavioural sciences is surely still untapped. Here, we present case studies that successfully applied CS to research projects in wildlife biology and discuss potentials and challenges experienced. Our case studies cover a broad range of opportunities: largescale CS projects with interactive online tools on bird song dialects, engagement of stakeholders as citizen scientists to reduce human-wildlife conflicts, involvement of students of primary and secondary schools in CS projects as well as collaboration with the media leading to successful recruitment of citizen scientists. Each case study provides a short overview of the scientific questions and how they were approached to showcase the potentials and challenges of CS in wildlife biology.Based on the experience of the case studies, we highlight how CS may support research in wildlife biology and emphasise the value of fostering communication in CS to improve recruitment of participants and to facilitate learning and mutual trust among different groups of interest (e.g., researchers, stakeholders, students).We further show how specific training for the participants may be needed to obtain reliable data. We consider CS as a suitable tool to enhance research in wildlife biology through the application of open science procedures (i.e., open access to articles and the data on publicly available repositories) to support transparency and sharing experiences.This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Citizen science is a growing field of research and practice, generating new knowledge and understanding through the collaboration of citizens in scientific research. As the field expands, it is becoming increasingly important to consider its potential to foster education and learning opportunities. Although progress has been made to support learning in citizen science projects, as well as to facilitate citizen science in formal and informal learning environments, challenges still arise. This paper identifies a number of dilemmas facing the field—from competing scientific goals and learning outcomes, differing underlying ontologies and epistemologies, diverging communication strategies, to clashing values around advocacy and activism. Although such challenges can become barriers to the successful integration of citizen science into mainstream education systems, they also serve as signposts for possible synergies and opportunities. One of the key emerging recommendations is to align educational learning outcomes with citizen science project goals at the planning stage of the project using co-creation approaches to ensure issues of accessibility and inclusivity are paramount throughout the design and implementation of every project. Only then can citizen science realise its true potential to empower citizens to take ownership of their own science education and learning.
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