(From left) Master’s graduate Maeng A-yoon, student Nam Hee-jeong, and Professor Kang WanMo

Analysis Linking Demand, Habitat-Based Supply, and Crop Yields…
Published in the international journal *Ecological Indicators*
 
A research team led by Professor Kang WanMo of the Department of Forest and Environmental Systems at Kookmin University, in collaboration with Dr. Cheon Gwang-il of the Ecosystem Services Team at the National Institute of Ecology, has developed an integrated indicator framework capable of comprehensively assessing the complex relationships among the demand for pollination ecosystem services, habitat-based supply, and actual crop yields in a climate-change context. This study was published in *Ecological Indicators* (IF: 8.7, mrnIF: 89.086, Q1), a prestigious international journal in the fields of ecology and environmental science. Maeng A-yoon, who earned her master’s degree from the Department of Forest Resources at Kookmin University in February 2026, served as the first author, while Nam Hee-jeong, a doctoral candidate, participated as a co-author. Professor Kang Wan-mo and Dr. Cheon Gwang-il served as co-corresponding authors. This study is particularly significant as it builds upon Maeng A-yoon’s master’s thesis, which was further developed into a paper published in an international academic journal.
 
Pollination—the process by which various pollinating bees, including honeybees, move from flower to flower to transfer pollen and facilitate fruit set—is an ecosystem service essential for the fruit production of major crops such as apples, pears, and strawberries, as well as for maintaining food security. However, the habitats of pollinating bees are shrinking due to ongoing climate change, monoculture farming, and pesticide use, and phenomena such as the disappearance of honeybees are leading to increasing instability in pollination ecosystem services. Previous studies evaluating pollination services have primarily focused on calculating map-based habitat supply potential. Consequently, these studies had limitations when it came to conducting multidimensional, comprehensive assessments that also considered actual climate conditions or the fruit set and yield of pollination-dependent crops. Therefore, the research team utilized agricultural statistics and climate data from 17 metropolitan municipalities in South Korea from 2016 to 2022 to diagnose pollination ecosystem services by categorizing them into three key dimensions: demand, supply, and production. First, they used a linear mixed model to quantify the relationship between pollination dependency and cultivated area for each crop and calculated demand indicators based on these findings. Additionally, they analyzed the relative production volumes of crops to establish a production indicator reflecting crop production levels. Concurrently, by applying the InVEST model to construct a habitat-based supply indicator that accounts for land types and the characteristics of pollinating bees, they evaluated the demand for pollination ecosystem services, potential supply, and crop production volumes together.
 
The analysis revealed a strong correlation between the pollination demand index and the production index. This demonstrates that regional agricultural structures and the production levels of pollination-dependent crops are closely linked. In contrast, the correlation between the habitat-based supply index and the crop production index was found to be relatively weak.
 In other words, the study confirmed that favorable habitat conditions for pollinating bees do not necessarily lead directly to increased yields of pollinator-dependent crops in a given region, and that spatial mismatches may exist between the potential supply of ecosystem services and crop yields. In particular, crop yield indicators were found to be more strongly correlated with climate variables than with habitat-based supply factors. Yield indicators showed a strong positive correlation with latitude, whereas they exhibited a strong negative correlation with annual average temperature and precipitation. This reveals a spatial pattern in which crop yields of pollinator-dependent crops tend to be higher in areas within the study region that are located at higher latitudes and have relatively lower temperatures. Furthermore, the number of honeybee colonies per administrative district did not show a significant correlation with key pollinator ecosystem service indicators. This suggests that the number of managed honeybee colonies—which are maintained primarily for honey production—alone cannot fully explain the level of pollination ecosystem services in a region; rather, various factors, such as the activity environments of pollinating bees (including native and Western honeybees) and climatic conditions, can influence the delivery of these services.
 
This study is significant in that it did not limit the assessment of pollination ecosystem services to habitat evaluation alone, but rather categorized them into three dimensions—demand, supply, and production—while taking into account actual crop yields and climatic contexts. In particular, by confirming that habitat-based ecosystem service supply and crop yields may not necessarily align, the study highlights the need to consider not only potential habitat supply but also climatic conditions and crop yields when evaluating pollination ecosystem services. The results of this study are expected to serve as foundational data for the conservation and management of pollination ecosystem services in response to future climate change, as well as for the sustainable management of agricultural ecosystems and the formulation of related policies.
 
Meanwhile, the research paper, titled “Spatial patterns and climatic associations of pollination demand, habitat-based supply, and pollination-dependent production in South Korea” by Maeng, A., Nam, H., Kang, W., and Cheon, K. (2026), was published in *Ecological Indicators*, 191, 115583.