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School of GeoSciences DISSERTATION For the degree of MSc in Geographical Information Science William Blomstedt August 2014 COPYRIGHT STATEMENT Copyright of this dissertation is retained by the author and The University of Edinburgh. Ideas contained in this dissertation remain the intellectual property of the author and their supervisors, except where explicitly otherwise referenced. All rights reserved. The use of any part of this dissertation reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise or stored in a retrieval system without the prior written consent of the author and The University of Edinburgh (Institute of Geography) is not permitted. STATEMENT OF ORIGINALITY AND LENGTH I declare that this dissertation represents my own work, and that where the work of others has been used it has been duly accredited. I further declare that the length of the components of this dissertation is 5259 words (including in-text references) for the Research Paper and 7917 words for the Technical Report. Signed: Date: ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to recognize the faculty and staff of the University of Edinburgh Geosciences Department for the instruction and guidance this school year. Special acknowledgements to Bruce Gittings, William Mackaness, Neil Stuart and Caroline Nichol for sound thoughts and dissertation advice. I also extend a kind thank you to my advisor Alasdair MacArthur for agreeing to undertake this project with me. Thanks to all my fellow students on this MSc program. For the extensive effort leant to providing scale-hive data I am in debt to • Ari Seppälä, Finnish Beekeepers Association, MTT Agrifood Research Finland, Seppo Korpela, Sakari Raiskio • Jure Justinek and Čebelarske zveze Slovenije • René Zumsteg and Verein Deutschschweizerischer Und Rätoromanischer Bienenfreunde, Swise • Centre Apicole de Recherche et Information For his kindness and help starting this project I would like to distinguish Dr. Janko Božič. Thanks Janko. I was able to undertake this year of study partly due to the support from the Eva Crane Trust. Thank you to the trustees as well as Eva Crane herself, who has been a main inspiration me on this journey. Finally, my family, to whom I owe everything – Mother, Father, Grandpa Frank, Sister – Love and Thanks. William Blomstedt Research Paper Mapping The Phenology of European Honey Bee Nectar Flows Part I: Research Paper 1 William Blomstedt Research Paper ii. ABSTRACT Insect pollination is vital to both the health of our ecosystem and food production. Consequently, it is important to understand how the phenology of both pollinators and plants will be influenced by global climate change. Current satellites allow a near-daily synoptic view of the entire earth, but it is difficult linking the imagery with in situ events because of the difference in scale between a point and pixel. Due to their generalized foraging on a variety of plants in the 100 km2 surrounding their hive, honey bees operate at a scale which may be compared to satellite data. The MODIS Aqua and Terra satellites produce daily images of the earth and the Normalized Differentiation Vegetation Index (NDVI) is able to show the “green-up” or start of spring (SOS). Locally, the phenology of nectar-producing flowers can be inferred from the honey bee nectar flow (HBNF), which is measured by the weight gain of a honey bee hive. This research investigates the link between smoothed, gap-filled NDVI data, and weight gain of hives in Slovenia, Switzerland, Belgium and Finland during 2009-2012. No correlation was found between the SOS and HBNF start day, but a notable relationship (R2=0.73) was seen between NDVI SOS and HBNF midpoint (50% day) within the Alps and broadleaf forests of central Europe. This indicates that HBNF can be related to continental MODIS climate models, and that nectar flows have been advancing 0.54 days per year in central Europe. 2 William Blomstedt Research Paper iii. TABLE OF CONTENTS i. TITLE PAGE........................................................................................................................................... 1 ii. ABSTRACT........................................................................................................................................... 2 iii. TABLE OF CONTENTS...................................................................................................................... 3 iv. LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AND ACRONYMS................................................................................4 1. INTRODUCTION.................................................................................................................................. 5 1.1 POLLINATION.......................................................................................................................... 5 1.2 HONEY BEES............................................................................................................................ 5 1.3 SATELLITE REMOTE SENSING............................................................................................6 1.4 LINKING SATELLITE WITH HBNF.......................................................................................6 1.5 RESEARCH QUESTION AND HYPOTHOSIS.......................................................................7 2. LITERATURE REVIEW....................................................................................................................... 8 2.1 HONEY BEES............................................................................................................................ 8 2.2 FORAGE.................................................................................................................................... 8 2.3 SCALE-HIVE............................................................................................................................. 8 2.4 NORMALIZED DIFFERENCE VEGETATION INDEX..........................................................9 2.5 LINKING NDVI WITH GROUND MEASUREMENTS........................................................10 2.6 CALCULATING SOS..............................................................................................................10 2.7 LSP AND HONEYBEES..........................................................................................................11 3. DATA AND METHODS...................................................................................................................... 12 3.1 STUDY AREAS....................................................................................................................... 12 3.2 DIGITAL MAP OF EUROPEAN ECOLOGICAL REGIONS................................................14 3.3 SCALE-HIVE DATA............................................................................................................... 14 3.3.1 SLOVENIA...................................................................................................................... 14 3.3.2 BELGIUM........................................................................................................................ 15 3.3.3 SWITZERLAND.............................................................................................................. 16 3.3.4 FINLAND......................................................................................................................... 17 3.4 HONEY BEE NECTAR FLOW METRICS.............................................................................18 3.5 MODIS NDVI.......................................................................................................................... 18 3.6 TIMESAT................................................................................................................................. 19 4. RESULTS............................................................................................................................................. 20 4.1 HBNF DATA............................................................................................................................ 20 4.2 START OF SEASON – HBNF METRICS...............................................................................21 4.3 TWO SCENARIOS.................................................................................................................. 24 5. DISCUSSION...................................................................................................................................... 27 6. CONCLUSION.................................................................................................................................... 29 7. DATA CITATION................................................................................................................................. 31 7.1 MODIS..................................................................................................................................... 31 7.2 SCALE-HIVE DATA............................................................................................................... 31 7.3 DMEER.................................................................................................................................... 31 8. BIBLIOGRAPHY................................................................................................................................ 32 3 William Blomstedt Research Paper iv. LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AND ACRONYMS ACMF – Alps Conifer and Mixed Forests AVHRR – Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer DMEER – Digital