Under the scope of provisioning ES, genetic resources in the form of Crop Wild Relatives (CWRs) are considered an important benefit to human well-being. CWR are wild species which are closely related to domesticated crops, with genetic traits that might aid to crop improvement. Israel is considered a global CWR hotspot (Castañeda-Álvarez et al. 2016, Vincent et al. 2013). Located within a geographical transitional zone with four climatic regions, it is home to some 2,700 plant species, of which over 300 have been identified as CWR (Barazani et al. 2008). The main use of the genetic resources of CWR in Israel is for R&D purposes, including selective breeding with an emphasis on pest tolerance abilities and various diseases or development of unique products. Such utilisation renders Israel’s genetic resources as an intermediate ecosystem service, contributing to final provisioning ES such as food crops or ornamental products (Anikster et al. 2005, Hadas et al. 2009, Leonard et al. 2004).

Pollination plays a key role in maintaining the functional integrity of most terrestrial ecosystems: an estimated 88% of all angiosperm species are animal-pollinated (Ollerton et al. 2011) and the reproduction in many plant populations is by pollen, limited and likely affected by changes in pollinator communities (Ashman et al. 2004). Pollination is also critical for human food supply: 77% of the leading global food crops depend on animal pollinators to produce yield (Klein et al. 2007). These include the majority of edible fruits, nuts and seeds. Yield quantity and quality are positively affected by adequate pollination, including the number, weight, size, shape, nutritional value and shelf life of fruits or seeds (Eilers et al. 2011, Brittain et al. 2014, Klatt et al. 2013).

Crop pollination relies mainly on managed colonies of the domesticated honey bee (Apis mellifera) (Delaplane and Mayer 2000). However, this species is becoming increasingly difficult to manage mainly due to the combined effects of parasites, diseases and pesticides (Williams et al. 2010, Smith et al. 2013). In addition, honey bees do not pollinate all crops efficiently and supplementary pollination may be needed (Garibaldi et al. 2013). Wild bees have been shown to contribute substantially to the pollination of a variety of crops (Klein et al. 2007) and to provide a safety net in the event of honey bee colony collapses (Winfree et al. 2007). The diversity of wild pollinator communities can make them more efficient than a single pollinator species (Blüthgen and Klein 2011) and more resistant to environmental changes (Winfree and Kremen 2009, Garibaldi et al. 2011). Hence, there are functional benefits attached to conservation of diverse pollinator communities in arable landscapes.

In Israel, a hot spot of bee diversity (Delaplane and Mayer 2000), rich and abundant bee communities were found inhabiting agricultural landscapes (Pisanty and Mandelik 2015). Wild bees were found to contribute significantly to the pollination of some crops, mostly in fields surrounded by natural and semi-natural habitats (Pisanty et al. 2014, Pisanty et al. 2016). Main crop pollinators were found to be generalist foragers, ground nesters, of small and medium body size (Pisanty and Mandelik 2015).

The main benefits that people gain from open spaces and nature in Israel are physical (recreation, travels and sports activities) alongside aesthetics (experiencing the natural view and landscapes) and educational outputs (Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) 2016a). These open spaces and natural areas are mainly located outside the urban areas of Israel and are characterised by an amalgam of man-made (agriculture) and natural ecosystems (Mediterranean landscape, desert, marine and inland water).

Tourism and recreation can be assessed quantitatively and frequently considered as tangible dimensions of cultural ES (Hernández-Morcillo et al. 2013). Previous analysis of tourism and recreation as benefits of cultural ES in Israel revealed that they are mainly consumed by domestic tourists and recreationists. The National Park Authority data revealed that only 15 percent of more than 4M visitors to natural sites were international tourists and only 17% of the 2M nights in rural accommodation were booked by international tourists (Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) 2016b). However, the accessibility to cultural ES in Israel is dependent on the availability of private cars, due to only partial coverage of the public transportation system and to the state legislation that restricts public transport services in weekends and Jewish religious holidays.

The above information and more were collected throughout the I-NEA in order to have an idea about cultural ES use in Israel. However, none of these data could be expressed in a continuous, spatial manner and not in a national scale.

Mapping of CWR in Israel was based on species with genetic similarity to known cultivated crops, as classified by Barazani et al. (2008), which included 323 species. Amongst them, 137 species were selected based on their ability to breed with cultivated species with varying success rates. These CWR species were used as a proxy for the potential of genetic resources of Israel’s flora. Distribution data of these species were gathered from the Israeli Biodiversity Information System (BioGIS) website (http://www.biogis.huji.ac.il), which hosts various datasets of species observations and collections. A total number of 19,829 plant observations were selected from 1985-2017, including observations for which no specific date was specified and their coordinates were imported to a GIS software. Duplicate observations of the same species over different periods were omitted. In addition, past observations in natural areas, which today are urban, were also removed. The land of Israel was divided into 25 km²-sized grid cells and the density of the selected CWR species occurrences was then calculated for each grid cell.

For mapping the potential of wild bee pollination service on a national scale, we used a Land Use/Land Cover (LULC) map that was produced for the I-NEA as part of the mapping of Israel ecosystems (see Table 1 for the LULC types and more details in Lotan et al. 2017). In order to evaluate the contribution of different LULC types to the richness and abundance of wild bee communities, as a proxy to their delivery of pollination service to agriculture, we followed Kennedy et al. (2013) and focused on the seasonal availability of two main resources, known to shape pollinator communities (Michener 2007).

1. Foraging resources – for each LULC type, we estimated a) the relative amount of time during which flowers are available out of the overall wild bee activity period in Israel (February till October); and b) the relative abundance of flowers per unit area on average (0-1 scale). To obtain a score for foraging resources, we multiplied the relative time by the relative abundance estimates for each LULC category.
2. Nesting resources – for each LULC type, we estimated the relative availability of nesting resources for above- and below-ground nesters (0-1 scale). We averaged the values for the two nesting guilds to obtain a final score for nesting resources.

Finally, for each LULC category, we averaged its foraging and its nesting scores to obtain a final score of LULC-suitability for wild bees. In the Agricultural land-uses, we deducted a relative “pesticide penalty” (0-1 scale) from the scoring obtained, that was determined based on expert opinion. The final scores were then converted to relative ranks (Table 1) that were used for the creation of the map.

An underlying assumption in our work is that there is a positive relation between bee richness and abundance in land-uses surrounding agricultural fields and the delivery of pollination services to these fields. In making this assumption, we relied on the tendency of main crop pollinators to enter agricultural fields from the surrounding natural/semi-natural habitats (Pisanty and Mandelik 2015) and on the high spatio-temporal complementarity found in pollination activity of main wild crop pollinators (Pisanty et al. 2016).

Cultural ecosystem services are difficult to assess due to their intangible nature and measuring or mapping the potential, demand and flow are not trivial (Burkhard et al. 2014). One inherent difficulty is to establish a clear relationship between possible cultural ecosystem service and certain elements of the ecosystem and its functions (Hernández-Morcillo et al. 2013). For example, the reason that brings a visitor to a certain site could be either aesthetic, spiritual or recreational activity or even all three of these.

While the open spaces of Israel are a valuable source of cultural ecosystems services, the actual number of their beneficiaries is unknown, especially in free of charge areas (such as beaches, inland water bodies, forests and the desert). Therefore, the cultural ecosystems evaluation required proxies for usage patterns and visitation numbers in open spaces.

One of the indirect options to evaluate the use of physical environments, including natural ones, is using big data, more specifically geotagged photos (Oteros-Rozas et al. 2017). Social media websites (e.g. Flicker) were found before as reliable sources for estimating the number of visitors to natural areas in several studies (for a short review, Tenkanen et al. 2017). Therefore, this approach was used to estimate visitation patterns in the present study. The advantage of relying on photo-related metrics associated with cultural ecotourism was derived from their being based on comparable units (number of photos) with specific spatial identifications. Thus, it enables the comparison of different ecosystems. Furthermore, sharing photos of ecosystems and biodiversity by social media indicates aesthetic and inspirational importance of these elements. Nevertheless, here we consider the geotagged photo density as a proxy for recreational use pattern of Israel open spaces.

Using Panoramio, a location-centric landscape-orientated photo sharing service owned by Google (closed in November 2016), all geotagged photos that were taken between 2005-2016 in the open areas of Israel (protected, non-protected, natural and man-made) were imported to GIS software. Photos that were taken within urban areas (including small settlements) were excluded due to the high representation of manmade, artificial objects. The remaining photos (~ 27,000 photos), representing various types of nature-orientated recreational activities, were used for the mapping. The density of these photos was mapped using the kernel function (Silverman 1986) with a search radius (bandwidth) of 5 km and a resolution (cell size) of 100 m.

Fig. 1 presents the mapping of 137 CWR species in Israel, based on the classification of Barazani et al. (2008). According to the produced map, several hotspots are clearly visible, mainly in the Golan Heights, the Upper Galilee, Mount Carmel and the area close to Jerusalem. The observed distribution of CWR is in accordance with spatial land use patterns, where developmental pressure is low in the observed hotspots. In addition, the distribution pattern adheres to certain geographic and climatic factors observed in Israel: the majority of the hotspots are characterised by relatively high-altitude locations and high precipitation. The observed hotspots also correspond to spatial concentrations of general species richness (Levin and Shmida 2007).

Figure 1.  

Density of Crop Wild Relative (CWR) species, having relatively high breeding capability with domesticated species, in 25 km² area units. Mapping is based on plant species observations taken from BioGIS website (1985-2017).

The mapping of pollination service by wild bees in Israel was based on a scoring and ranking approach. We found that different land-use categories may vary considerably in their expected contribution to the richness and abundance of wild bee communities (Table 1). Two main patterns emerged from our scoring process. First, agricultural land-uses are ranked lower compared to natural and semi-natural land-use types. This is due to the “pesticide penalty” applied to the agricultural land-uses and their relative short bloom period compared to natural/semi-natural land-uses. Second, regenerating semi-natural habitats, namely sparse pine forests with regenerating understorey vegetation, may have higher value for wild bees compared to natural perennial-dominated land-uses. Accordingly, mapping the contribution of different land-uses to wild bee richness and abundance and to the expected delivery of pollination service, shows the highest values in regions characterised by dwarf shrubland dominated by annuals, as in the Golan Heights (Fig. 2). Areas with high amounts of natural/semi-natural habitats, such as the Judean foothills and upper Galilee have also high values, while areas that are developed and/or used for agriculture, such as most of the coastal plains and the northern valleys, have the lowest contribution to wild bee communities and pollination services.

Figure 2.  

Relative contribution of Israel’s open landscapes to wild bee communities as a proxy for the delivery of wild bees pollination service. The LULC-related ranks are presented in Table 1.

The map of Panoramio-geotagged photos in open spaces in Israel (Fig. 3) shows an irregular pattern of distribution of photos. The two most popular natural environments are pine forests (which are mostly man-made) that are surrounding the urban centres of Israel (Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Haifa) and natural inland water bodies (Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea). Additionally, water springs in northern Israel and the Golan Heights and oases in the desert attracted many photos and consequently suggested many visitors.

Figure 3.  

Density of geotagged photo taken from Panoramio website (2005-2016). Mapping was done using kernel function with a search radius of 5 km and a resolution of 100 m.