The aftermath of explosive volcanism is ecologically important in Indonesia but difficult to study because of its unpredictability. In this proposal, we propose to monitor ecosystem recovery after volcanic eruptions with a specific focus on soil micro-organisms and how they can mediate initial soil development in fresh ash deposits. Whilst previous studies have examined microbial communities in 'young' volcanic environments, the age of these deposits was generally in the order of years, thereby missing the key earliest stages of succession during which microbes start to modify the initial edaphic environment. Major volcanic activity at Anak Krakatau, an iconic island volcano in Indonesia, in December 2018 led to a complete reconfiguration of the island and the rare opportunity to study microbial recolonisation and the importance of microbes in ecosystem recovery. In this urgency project, we will sample ash/soils from Anak Krakatau within a few months of the eruption producing a novel dataset. Microbial diversity will be compared with that in the spore-rain to assess if there are constraints to microbial colonisation. We will also set up a series of experiments whereby we inoculate ash/soil to determine how the colonisation of microbes can influence carbon and nutrient accumulation in the ash substrate and the growth of pioneer plant species, and conversely how constraints to colonisation might impede it. Understanding the development of soils over volcanic ash is important because they are very fertile and support high population densities as well as sequestering large amounts of carbon over decadal timescales.

Ecosystems are under threat worldwide - natural habitats are being lost and the remaining areas are degraded and fragmented. Developing countries in the tropics have some of the world's highest concentrations of endemic species, but very high rates of land-use change. Climate change is already affecting tropical species, and there is particular concern about whether they will be able to shift from areas that become too hot or dry, across fragmented landscapes, to reach refuges in montane regions. If land-use change and forest degradation continue too intensively in these countries, species and ecosystem functions will be lost, leading to detrimental impacts on the livelihoods of local people dependent on these lands. Habitats across a landscape can be thought of as an "ecological network", and these networks need to have sufficient habitat area, quality and connectivity to be functional. Robust ecological networks require stronger protection of existing habitat and restoration of degraded forest. Policy makers and nature conservation practitioners are increasingly thinking about biodiversity conservation at landscape scales, but continuing land-use change leads to difficult decisions about how to prioritise habitat preservation and restoration, and technologies are lacking to allow practitioners to be able to do this. There is huge potential for landscape prioritisation to be informed by NERC-funded research. We have developed a model based on ecological understanding of range shifts, which quantifies how different elements of a habitat network contribute to long-distance connectivity. This model can also identify the best habitat to preserve, or locations to target for restoration. We have also quantified biodiversity in fragmented tropical forest habitats, and shown how land-use change affects forest species, in particular the extent to which they can persist in selectively logged forest, small forest fragments, extensive plantations and intensive plantations. This knowledge can now be used innovatively with new technologies and data, particularly remotely sensed data, to enable large-scale sustainable land-use planning for tropical developing countries under climate change. This project will develop an online spatial decision support tool for planning robust and resilient habitat networks under climate change. Our tool will be co-created and tested with partners in Ghana, Indonesia and Malaysia, locations where landscape planning is urgently required to support the livelihoods of local communities and other stakeholders dependent on building resilient landscapes under environmental change . Our partner organisations are responsible for sustainable forest planning and biodiversity protection in their countries, balancing biodiversity and socio-economic needs of landscapes. Our partners have proposed specific case studies that exemplify the most pressing choices and alternative scenarios they face - our new tool will be applied with their existing data to highlight priorities for action. Priorities will be based on connectivity benefits for biodiversity, weighted by economic costs and stakeholder preferences. The most tangible and long-lasting output of this project will be the freely available web interface to our tool, backed by a high-performance computing cluster in Liverpool that will perform the analyses. This interface makes the tool globally accessible, and is vital for future users in developing countries, because computing power limitations would preclude them running a desktop version. The project will also provide face-to-face training to relevant stakeholders in our partner countries, and online tutorial materials tailored to the needs of developing countries. Hence we will build capacity for our tool to be used as part of multidisciplinary projects addressing development challenges in future, to find efficient solutions where vital networks of natural habitat coexist with the needs of local stakeholders.

Mangrove forests are unique intertidal ecosystems connecting the land- and seascape. They provide habitat to terrestrial and marine species, sustain the livelihoods of millions of mostly poor people globally, and are considered as high priority habitats in climate change mitigation strategies, due to their extraordinary carbon sink capacity. Mangroves forests are degraded globally, with land use change being the single most serious threat at present. Successful restoration/rehabilitation of diverse, functional, resource-rich and resilient mangrove forests is a major development challenge in many countries, including Indonesia. The so called Blue Revolution - the conversion of mangroves to (unsustainable) aquaculture ponds in the 80s and 90s - is one major reason why the country has lost 40% of its mangroves over the last three decades. This has caused manifold problems for people's lives. Halting and reversing Indonesia's loss of mangrove natural assets is key to improve coastal livelihoods and reduce poverty. The Indonesian government currently spends around $13 million a year for planting mangroves on degraded areas. Most planting projects in Indonesia and elsewhere in the world have failed, and it is mostly understood why. There are however numerous critical information gaps in understanding how successful the "successful" projects are in regards to recreating diverse and functional self-organising and self-maintaining systems. CoReNat will investigate outcomes of established community-based mangrove restoration/ rehabilitation (R/R) projects in the heart of Wallacea - North-Sulawesi - Indonesia, to unravel whether these mangroves are "As good as (G)Old?". The overall project aims are to assess whether mangrove ecosystem biodiversity, functions, resilience and service provision have been restored, and to make evidence-based recommendations for maximizing the success of future R/R efforts in Wallacea (and beyond). Combining UK and Indonesian experience, expertise and scientific excellence, CoReNat will provide evidence-based recommendations to relevant stakeholder to guide future ecological R/R efforts. CoReNat takes a novel interdisciplinary approach to deliver a comprehensive ecosystem evaluation of established restored/rehabilitated and adjacent natural (reference) mangroves, bringing together paleoecology, geoscience, botany, zoology, environmental microbiology, ecological network analysis combined with next generation sequencing, toxicology and bioexploration. CoReNat will - provide new data on the region's (mangrove-associated) biodiversity and species interactions, for conserved as well as for rehabilitated/restored mangrove forests - apply and generate innovative new tools for the field of mangrove restoration - provide data that will allow a better understanding of the biodiversity, functioning and services of mono-specific versus multi-specific replanted mangroves - support the provision of solutions to mangrove conservation, restoration/ rehabilitation and management - explore current local use of conserved and restored mangroves, as well as potential new avenues for business and innovation, to help balance Indonesia's need for conservation with economic development

The Wallacea region, lying between the Borneo to the west and Papau New Guinea to the east, is one of the world's biodiversity hotspots, hosting incredibly high levels of biodiversity, much of which is unique to the region. This exceptional level of biodiversity and endemism reflects evolutionary diversification and radiation over millions of years in one of the world's most geologically complex and active regions. The region's exceptional biodiversity, however, is threatened by climate change, direct exploitation and habitat destruction and fragmentation from land use change. Continued habitat loss and fragmentation is expected to precipitate population declines, increase extinction rates, and could also lead to 'reverse speciation' where disturbance pushes recently diverged species together, leading to increased hybridisation, genetic homogenisation, and species' collapse. Already, approximately 1,300 Indonesian species have been listed as at risk of extinction, but the vast majority of the region's biodiversity has not been assessed and we lack basic information on the distribution and diversification of many groups, let alone understanding of what processes drove their diversification, how they will respond to future environmental change, and how to minimize species' extinctions and losses of genetic diversity while balancing future sustainable development needs. In response to the need for conservation and management strategies to minimize the loss of Wallacea's unique biodiversity under future environmental change and future development scenarios, we will develop ForeWall, a genetically explicit individual-based model of the origin and future of the region's biodiversity. ForeWall will integrate state-of-the-art eco-evolutionary modelling with new and existing ecological and evolutionary data for terrestrial and aquatic taxa including mammals, reptiles, amphibians, freshwater fish, snails, damselflies and soil microbes, to deliver fresh understanding of the processes responsible for the generation, diversification, and persistence of Wallacea's endemic biodiversity. After testing and calibrating ForeWall against empirical data, we will forecast biodiversity dynamics across a suite of taxa under multiple environmental change and economic development scenarios. We will develop a set of alternative plausible biodiversity management/mitigation options to assess the effectiveness of these for preserving ecological and evolutionary patterns and processes across the region, allowing for policy-makers to minimise biodiversity losses during sustainable development. Our project will thus not only provide novel understanding of how geological and evolutionary processes have interacted to generate this biodiversity hotspot, but also provide policy- and decision-makers with tools and evidence to help preserve it.