Research


Introduction

Traditionally the wider countryside has been relatively under valued for its biodiversity and attention has focussed on biodiversity hot spots and protected areas. This project addressed this knowledge gap by providing quantitative information on patterns and trends in biodiversity (birds, insects [with an emphasis on bees as pollinators and butterflies] and trees) in relation to government policy driven landuse changes in agricultural land use in smallholder and large-scale farming systems in the Ugandan banana / coffee arc around Lake Victoria.

The project collected data from 26 sites based around 7 clusters, along an intensification gradient ranging from intensive monocultures (tea, sugar and coffee) to very diverse small-holder subsistence cropping. Much of the intensification data collected at these sites were correlated and so the key variables used to describe 'intensity' were the % of cultivated land and the cultivation intensity (proportion of agricultural land being cropped / (total of agricultural land being cropped + agricultural fallow). These two key variables described the amount of agriculture and how intensively it was being managed.