What's abuzz at the base: Bee diversity on Fairchild Air Force Base

Bees are the most important and diverse group of insect pollinators on the planet. Roughly a third of the world's food crops rely on the essential ecosystem services they provide. However, bees and other insects are declining at an alarming rate. Many factors, such as climate change and habitat loss, play a role in this continued loss of biomass. This is why natural areas are so critical to protect. Federal land such as national parks and forests do this, but other government land can have an impact too. Fairchild Air Force Base (FAFB), just west of Spokane, is one of these places. The southern portion of FAFB is a Military Training Area (MTA). MTAs are often similar in state to what they were when the land was purchased by the Department of Defense, and are reflective of the environments in which military forces may operate. This results in relatively low disturbance compared to elsewhere on the military installation and public land. We conducted the first assessment of insect biodiversity on FAFB using its MTA as our study site. Although we surveyed all insects, bees were picked as the focal group due to their importance to ecosystem health. This makes them good indicators of biodiversity as a whole. Additionally, no large scale surveys of bees have been performed in the Spokane area and this assessment helps contribute to our understanding of bee distribution and diversity in Washington State.