Remote Sensing and Ecosystem Services: Current Status and Future Opportunities for the Study of Bees and Pollination-Related Services

An unprecedented array of observing systems, coupled with ever increasing computing capacity, makes this a golden era for ecologists to study and quantify ecosystem services using remote sensing technology. Here, we review recent studies that utilize remote sensing to understand the supply and demand of ecosystem services, with a specific focus on pollination services by bees in forested and agroforestry contexts. Pollination by bees is a globally threatened ecosystem service that supports the production of food crops and maintains plant biodiversity. We explore how studies that use remote sensing to characterize landscapes, monitor individual organisms, measure biodiversity proxies or species habitat, and describe ecosystem processes may improve modeling of pollination services on spatial scales that match large-scale management efforts, such as forest conservation policy. We then discuss future research opportunities, such as exploring LiDAR and radar for 3-D habitat measurements, mapping phenology in space and time, and direct measurement of pollination events and outcomes.