Solar Squad

A Pollinator-Friendly Solar Garden

Introduction

Pollinators are the backbone of both agriculture and healthy ecosystems. Without them, our world would be so different: one without the beauty and biodiversity of different plants, and one with less accessibility to food and nutrients for both the human and animal populations. Due to influences of industrialization, monocultures, modern landscaping, the use of pesticides, natural diseases, and parasites, the populations of pollinators are on the decline. Promoting pollinator habitats will help ensure a healthy environment for pollinators to live and thrive, which will then strengthen ecosystems and secure a healthier world for future generations. Here's what we're doing to help at GVSU.

Background

In 2016, GVSU collaborated with Consumers Energy to install a Solar Garden of 11,250 solar panels across 17 acres of land. These solar panels create enough electricity to power the equivalent of 600 homes.

Our Plan

The Solar Squad is looking at creating a pollinator habitat at the Consumers Energy solar garden located on the Grand Valley State University greater campus. Although a Solar Garden is a great start to sustainability, the large open area requires maintenance, both in labor and costs. We would like to plant wildflowers around and under the solar panels at the GVSU Solar Garden to both mitigate the long-term maintenance, lower costs and to promote a habitat for pollinators. Our plan is to use a seed mix that requires little maintenance and attracts pollinators. By doing this, it would create more space for pollinators to thrive, and in addition would create an additional marketing strategy for Consumers Energy. An area able to generate solar power and attract pollinators at the same time makes the space multi-functional, and in turn more sustainable. It is important to make the most of a piece of land; creating a pollinator habitat would increase functionality, productivity, sustainability and visibility.

We would like to pitch this idea to Consumers Energy and actually put our words and research into action. Our group discussed reaching out to several clubs on campus to find volunteers to help with installation when the time comes. We would also like to use this opportunity to educate the public by creating signs to display at the Solar Garden that describe the importance of pollinator habitats and list which pollinators are likely to be attracted to the flowers that we plant. Field trips to the Solar Garden can now have a double purpose; to learn about how the solar panels provide a renewable energy source, and how the wildflowers support the pollinators.

Input from Stakeholders

Anne Marie Fauvel

Professor Fauvel suggested that some challenges to Consumers Energy buying into our pollinator habitat idea would be the vegetation growing too high and causing a problem with the solar panel efficiency, the maintenance required, and the cost of installation.

To counter these obstacles, Professor Fauvel spoke with Peter Berthelsen, who works for the Bee and Butterfly Habitat Fund, who is working on a seed mix that would have a low pollinator vegetation species mix with low to NO maintenance. This seed mix will not grow very tall which means no mowing or trimming required for these perennial flowers! The cost of installation would be comparable to the cost of setting up a lawn under the solar panels.

Yumiko Jakobcic

Yumi is the director of the Office of Sustainability Practices. She also suggested we plan to make our pollinator as low-maintenance as possible in order to get approval from Consumers Energy.

Professor Amy McFarland

Dr. McFarland is an Associate Professor of Honors and Environmental and Sustainability Studies at Grand Valley. She shared her concerns with us about implementing our pollinator habitat at the solar gardens. These included: little access for students and faculty to the solar gardens and difficulty providing maintenance to the plants.

Although there may be these challenges to overcome, we have come up with some solutions. At the end of our project, we plan to pitch the idea to Consumers Energy which would give us a chance to potentially have access to the gardens. Second, we are looking at seed mixes that require no maintenance. Dr. McFarland suggested looking at native wildflowers that are able to reseed themselves each year. She also suggested potentially looking at manipulating the land for water retention making the plants even easier to maintain.

Margaux Sellnau

Margaux Sellnau is the Farm Manager at GVSU's Sustainable Agriculture Project. She shared with us her take on where our project was doable and where it was not, providing us some insight on which direction we should proceed with for our project.

She believes that creating a pollinator habitat at the solar gardens would be a great way to bring both pollinators and beauty to the land around the solar panels that are left uncultivated.

Meet the Squad

Jeannée Hill

Biology / Natural Resources Management

Atticus Ykema

Environmental and Sustainability Studies / Biology

Ashley Snow

Environment and Sustainability Studies

Aili Kotajarvi

Environmental and Sustainability Studies

References

Akter, A., Biella, P., & Klecka, J. (2017). Effects of small-scale clustering of flowers on pollinator foraging behaviour and flower visitation rate. Plos One, 12(11).

Daniels, Benjamin, et al. (2020). A 'plan bee' for cities: Pollinator diversity and plant-pollinator interactions in urban green spaces. PLoS ONE, (15)7, e0235492.

González-Chaves, A., Jaffé, R., Metzger, J. P., & Kleinert, A. D. (2020). Forest proximity rather than local forest cover affects bee diversity and coffee pollination services. Landscape Ecology, 35(8), 1841-1855. doi:10.1007/s10980-020-01061-1

Havens, Kayri, and Pati Vitt. (2016). The Importance of Phenological Diversity in Seed Mixes for Pollinator Restoration. Natural Areas Journal, (36)4, 531-37.

Hill, D. B., & Webster, T. C. (1995). Apiculture and forestry (bees and trees). Agroforestry systems, 29(3), 313-320.

McMinn-Sauder, H.; Richardson, R.; Eaton, T.; Smith, M.; Johnson, R. (2020). Flowers in Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) Pollinator Plantings and the Upper Midwest Agricultural Landscape Supporting Honey Bees. Insects 2020, (11), 405.

Potts, Simon G., et al. (2003). Linking Bees And Flowers: How Do Floral Communities Structure Pollinator Communities? Ecology, (84)10, 2628–2642.

Stephenson, A. G., & Thomas, Wm. W. (1977). Diurnal and Nocturnal Pollination of Catalpa speciosa (Bignoniaceae). Systematic Botany, 2(3), 191–198.

Tuell, J. K., Ascher, J. S., & Isaacs, R. (2009). Wild Bees (Hymenoptera: Apoidea: Anthophila) of the Michigan Highbush Blueberry Agroecosystem. Annals of the Entomological Society of America, 102(2), 275–287.

Williams, N. M., Ward, K. L., Pope, N., Isaacs, R., Wilson, J., May, E. A., Ellis, J., Daniels, J., Pence, A., Ullmann, K., & Peters, J. (2015). Native wildflower plantings support wild bee abundance and diversity in agricultural landscapes across the United States. Ecological Applications, 25(8), 2119–2131.

Whittingham, M. J. (2011). The future of agri-environment schemes: Biodiversity gains and ecosystem service delivery? Journal of Applied Ecology, 48(3), 509–513.

Wratten, S. D., Gillespie, M., Decourtye, A., Mader, E., & Desneux, N. (2012). Pollinator habitat enhancement: Benefits to other ecosystem services. Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment, (159), 112–122.

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