Stans Prize for Kevin Groen
The ‘Stans Prize 2015' (for the best thesis, report or article produced by a CML student) has been awarded to Kevin Groen. Other CML prizes were awarded to Laura Bertola, Patrik Henriksson and Rene Kleijn.
The photo of the banner is of: gailhampshire from Cradley, Malvern, U.K by Creative Commons.
Kevin Groen received the Stans Price for his Master Thesis called: "The importance of spatially-varying landscape factors on the abundance and species richness of bees (Apidae) in agricultural fields and field edges in the Netherlands”
The Stans Prize is a yearly student incentive award for the best thesis, article or report produced by a CML student. The prizes were presented at the CML New Years Meeting on January, 12. 2016. Kevin has given a short presentation about his Master research.
Summary of the research of Kevin
It is frequently reported that bees are in decline. One of the causes of this decline is due to the fact that habitat suitable for bees is degrading and becoming more and more fragmented. The need for semi-natural areas in the current fragmented landscape is required to keep local bee populations healthy. Anthropogenic elements such as hedgerows, walls, tree lines, ditches and steep nature edges can play an important role in fulfilling these requirements. However, not much research has been done addressing the possible benefits of these elements. Knowledge about the effect of these elements on bees can be of value for bee conservation parties to improve the current landscape configuration for a more suitable habitat for bees. The purpose of this study was to examine the importance of landscape elements and land use classes (that together form the landscape context) in spatially-varying scales on total bee abundance, solitary bee abundance, social bee abundance, honeybee abundance and species richness. Using an existing bee sampling dataset and a recursive partitioning approach importance values could be obtained per spatial scale for each of the 41 landscape factors considered. In general, bees were negatively affected by increasing amounts of agricultural area in the wider landscape. However, a positive optimum was found regarding solitary bee abundance. Furthermore, our results showed that anthropogenic elements can enhance solitary bee abundance on spatially-varying scales.
Other CML publication prizes for 2015
During the meeting also the other publication prizes were announced.
The Stans award for the best CML scientific publications
are for:
- Product Carbon Footprints and Their Uncertainties in Comparative Decision Contexts by Patrik J. G. Henriksson, Reinout Heijungs, Jeroen B. Guinée *, Hai M. Dao, Lam T. Phan, Geert R. de Snoo and Jeroen B. Guinée (In: PloS ONE) Impact 3.23
- Autosomal and mtDNA Markers Affirm the Distinctiveness of Lions in West and Central Africa by Laura Bertola, L. Tensen. P. van Hooft, P.A. White, C.A. Discoll, P. Henschel, A. Caragiulo, I. Dias-Freedman, E.A. Sogbohossou, P.M. Tumenta, T.H. Jirmo, G.R. de Snoo, H.H. de Iongh & K. Vrieling. (In PLoS ONE) Impact 3.23
The Stans societal award 2015
goes to René Kleijn because he showed up a showed up a couple of times in the media, e.g. the ‘NOS Journaal (8 O’clock news) Brandpunt and Labyrinth, being recognized as an environmental expert on the global metabolism of metals and materials of all sort. His views were deemed valuable even if not directly related to a recently published paper. His performances made an impression.