What is this tool?
Here you can run a simulation to see how planting pollinator friendly revegetation adjacent to your crop will influence yield. The simulation will show you the effect of this revegetation for two future scenarios: both with and without varroa mite.
The assumption is that varroa mite will have a negative impact on crop yields. This negative impact can be reduced by converting a portion of the farm into revegetation that is pollinator friendly. This revegetation will support and promote other pollinators that can step in when varroa mite affects feral honey bees. We assume varroa mite will reduce the abundance of the Apis genus (feral honey bees) by 60%.
The revegetation will take time to grow and reach its full benefit to the pollinators. The output of a simulation will show a chart that plots crop yield over time so you can see how the revegetation improves over time.
How do I use the tool?
To run a simulation, fill in the required data at each step and press the run button at the end of this page. Feel free to tweak the inputs and re-run the simulation as many times as needed.
More details
If you're interested in the details of the model that runs the simulations, you can read the source code for the server. The source code for this webapp is also available. The underlying model software used by the server is NatCap's InVEST.
What type of crop are you growing?
The model needs to know where your farm is located as the surrounding land will differ in how well it supports pollinators depending if that land is, for example: industrial or conservation park.
This tool only support farms located in a subset of South Australia. The map will stop you from scrolling outside the supported area.
Move the map until you can see your farm. Then use the drawing tools (rectangle or polygon) in the top left of the map window to draw around the border of your farm on the map. There are also controls to edit or delete existing shapes.
You may only draw one farm shape. If your farm consists of multiple non-contiguous shapes, run the tool separately for each piece. Alternatively, draw one shape that encloses all parts of the farm and accept that the extra, non-farm, land will have some impact on the accuracy of the results.
Area of farm: 0 km² / 0 ha / 0 acres
Note: the area reported by the map whilst drawing is an approximation, the values here have better accuracy.
Now you need to define how much of the farm will be converted to pollinator friendly revegetation. You can also change the position of the revegetation within the farm, but note that this usually has only a small impact on the result.
Note: you cannot edit the farm here. If you need to make a change to the farm shape, go back to the previous step and edit it there.
Lastly, set how many years you would like to run the simulation for (how many years to predict into the future). This simulation will also model the impact that varroa mite will have. You can adjust which year varroa mite impacts.
Year varroa mite impacts:
Year to simulate: