Field boundaries can provide ecosystem services to crops by creating better abiotic conditions for crop growth, and can also act as habitat for beneficial arthropods. This suggests that crop boundaries may create an intermediate hump-shaped increase in crop yield, where negative edge effects are cancelled out by increased ecosystem services from the field boundary. However, there is little large-scale evidence showing this, largely because plot-scale crop yields are costly and time-consuming to measure. Precision yield data from combine yield monitors has huge potential in this respect, as the equipment is widespread and data is frequently recorded by growers. In this study, we used 252 field-years of yield monitor data from three common crops – wheat (Triticum aestivum), canola (Brassica napus), and peas (Pisum sativum) – recorded across Alberta, Canada, and examined how yield varied with distances from common crop boundary types. Average crop yield tended to increase with distance from crop boundaries before plateauing at about 50 m, and yield variation (SD) tended to decrease with distance. There was evidence of an intermediate increase in yield for wheat away from shelterbelts, and a weak increase in canola, but this was not seen for other crop types or boundary types. This study represents one of the first uses of precision yield data to measure ecosystem service provision at large spatial scales.

田间边界可以通过为作物生长创造更好的非生物条件来为作物提供生态系统服务，也可以作为有益节肢动物的栖息地。这表明作物边界可能会导致作物产量呈中间驼峰状增加，其中负面的边缘效应被来自田间边界的生态系统服务增加所抵消。然而，几乎没有大规模的证据表明这一点，主要是因为测量地块规模的作物产量既昂贵又耗时。来自联合收割机产量监测器的精确产量数据在这方面具有巨大潜力，因为设备广泛且种植者经常记录数据。在这项研究中，我们使用了来自三种常见作物——小麦 ( Triticum aestivum )、油菜 ( Brassica napus ) 的 252 年田间产量监测数据) 和豌豆 ( Pisum sativum ) – 记录在加拿大艾伯塔省，并研究了产量如何随距离常见作物边界类型的距离而变化。平均作物产量随着距离作物边界的距离而增加，在大约 50 m 处达到平稳状态，而产量变化 (SD) 则随着距离的增加而减小。有证据表明，远离防护林的小麦产量中等增长，而油菜的增长较弱，但其他作物类型或边界类型并未出现这种情况。这项研究代表了精确产量数据在大空间尺度上衡量生态系统服务供应的首批用途之一。