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CBESS Summary: The health of the UK's coastlines is inextricably linked to our success as an island nation, and resonates through our economy, our recreation, and our culture. Most pressingly, of all the UK's many and varied landscapes, its coastal systems are the ones most immediately sensitive to climate change. As temperatures increase, sea levels will rise and the forces experienced where land and sea meet will become more destructive. Salt marshes, mudflats, beaches and rocky shores will all be affected but, of these areas, the most sensitive are the mudflats and salt marshes that are common features of coastal systems, and which comprise just over half of the UK's total estuarine area. Not only do these landscapes support a wide range of economically valuable animal and plant species, they also act as sites of carbon storage, nutrient recycling, and pollutant capture and destruction. Their preservation is, therefore, of the utmost importance, requiring active and informed management to save them for future generations. The Natural Environment Research Council's call to help understand the landscape-scale links between the functions that these systems provide (ecosystem service flows) and the organisms that help provide these services (biodiversity stocks) offers an important opportunity to move beyond most previous work in this field, which has been conducted at small or laboratory scales. While of foundational scientific importance, the implications of laboratory studies can be hard to translate into policy, and coastal managers require a clearer evidence base to understand how ecosystem service flows operate at much larger spatial scales, e.g. entire salt marshes or regions of intertidal flat and salt marshes. The programme we are proposing 'A hierarchical approach to the examination of the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem service flows across coastal margins' (CBESS) will provide such a large scale understanding. Our consortium of UK experts ranges from microbial ecologists, through environmental economists, to mathematical modellers, including organisations like the BTO and the RSPB, who have immediate and vested interest in the sustainable use of coastal wetlands. Together, CBESS will create a study that spans the landscape scale, investigating how biodiversity stocks provide the following ecosystem services (cf. National Ecosystem Assessment). - Supporting' services: nutrient cycling, healthy habitat - Provisioning services; goods obtained from the landscape - Regulating' services: coastal protection, climate regulation (greenhouse gas exchange, carbon sequestration) - Cultural services: Recreation (walking, canoeing, angling, birding, hunting and beauty) CBESS will combine the detailed study of two regional landscapes with a broad-scale UK-wide study to allow both specific and general conclusions to be drawn. The Regional study will compare two areas of great local and national importance: Morecambe Bay on the west coast and the Essex coastline on the east coast. We will carry out biological and physical surveys at more than 600 stations and use these results to clarify how biodiversity can provide these important ecosystem functions. This information will be shared with those interested in using and managing coastal systems and, after our analysis; we will propose practical methods and improved tools for the future analysis, management, and sustainability of the UK's coastal wetlands.

Tropical forest and agriculture compete for the same land, but the benefits are distributed to different people. Two key benefits from tropical forest are the continued existence of tropical nature, which enriches our lives, and the storage of carbon in living trees, which regulates our climate. These benefits accrue to people around the world. In contrast, most of the benefits from agriculture (food and income) accrue to the farmers themselves, plus local and national consumers and local and national economies. The consequence is that land-use decisions in any given location will mostly be made by the beneficiaries of agriculture rather than the beneficiaries of tropical forest, for obvious reasons: farmers know that they benefit from converting forest to agriculture and are able to convert their desires into action, while the beneficiaries of tropical forest are global but individually only benefit a little and also find it difficult to convert their desires into action. The result is that tropical forest continues to be converted to agriculture. One way to try to right this imbalance in decision-making is to use what are called 'market-based instruments' to make the conservation of tropical forest at least as profitable to local communities and to agribusinesses as farming. Two such instruments are carbon-credit payments and premium-pricing for agricultural goods. For instance, consumers of airline flights and 'Rainforest-Friendly' chocolate bars pay extra, and the generated income streams are directed to countries and their local populations to compensate them for not converting forest to farmland. However, the big challenge is to verify that these payments are indeed resulting in the conservation of forest that is high in carbon and biodiversity. Until recently, this challenge has been largely insuperable because of the technical difficulties of measuring forest carbon and biodiversity in ways that are auditable and low-cost. Recently, though, major advances in satellite remote-sensing are making it possible to track changes in forest cover, repeatedly and at a low cost per image (in many cases, free to download). The remaining challenge is to interpret these data-rich images in order to quantify changes in the amount of aboveground biomass (to measure change in carbon stocks) and in the amount of biodiversity that those forests contain. This challenge requires on-the-ground measurements to generate the data that can be used to interpret raw data from satellite-based sensors. This is what we propose, working in the 908 km2 forested buffer zone of the Gola Rainforest National Park (GRNP) in Sierra Leone, where cocoa, a potential driver of deforestation, is the main cash crop. So far, only a small portion of farmers receive a higher price for 'Rainforest Friendly' cocoa, and payments for carbon are jeopardised if forest clearance in the buffer zone continues unabated. Satellite-based mapping would inform sustainable development plans that allow cocoa expansion to be directed to areas of low carbon and biodiversity, and ongoing satellite-based monitoring would make it possible for anyone to easily verify whether carbon stocks and biodiversity are being protected. Carbon payments and premium-pricing for Rainforest-Friendly cocoa would therefore be safeguarded and expanded, improving the welfare of the 22,000 people living in the buffer zone while also reducing pressure on forest. This project has been co-designed with GRC-LG who manage the GRNP and who identified the need for a better decision-support system. The current method of verification for carbon payments via five-yearly surveys is inefficient and does not account for biodiversity. GRC-LG has strong links with the Sierra Leone government, placing this work in a strong position to influence the management of other forest-carbon projects in West Africa. Keywords: biodiversity, carbon, cocoa, REDD+, metabarcoding, remote sensing, tropical forest

Woodland creation forms a core part of the UK Government's Net Zero Strategy, with a target to create 30,000 ha new woodland per year by 2024. National policy rarely maps neatly onto actions at lower scales, with this scale mismatch creating a barrier to effective treescape expansion. STAND will combine ecological and biophysical modelling with participatory scenario planning, underpinned by a strong theoretical framework, to identify the design and governance of future treescapes that can achieve the best outcomes for people and nature. STAND addresses all three programme themes (with a particular focus on themes 1 & 2) and complements research funded through the first round of the Treescapes programme. The ecological and climate impacts of treescape expansion depend on the type, location and configuration of land-use change. Modelling the expected consequences of alternative land-use scenarios can aid decision making by making explicit the advantages and disadvantages of different modes of treescape expansion. STAND will use a multi-criteria approach that considers complementary and competing land uses and accounts for other impacts (e.g. on food and timber production); this is critical for making trade-offs explicit and avoiding unintended consequences. We will deploy this interdisciplinary approach in two case study landscapes (Elenydd-Mallaen and North Pennines & Dales) where land management influences, and is influenced by, actors and stakeholders working at different scales (e.g. private landowners, local authorities, devolved governments). We will co-produce land-use scenarios representing different modes of treescape expansion, then explore the challenges, opportunities, synergies, and trade-offs of each scenario. These scenarios will be developed at the landscape-scale, and will principally reflect local- to regional interests and values. As treescape expansion also impacts more distant beneficiaries, we will compare our bottom-up landscape-scale approach with a top-down UK-scale scenario modelling exercise. For each case study landscape, we will identify how much treescape expansion and other land use/management change are needed to meet a UK land sector net zero target, the extent to which this ambition is compatible with local stakeholder values and preferences, and how potential future land-use change is best governed by the principles and practices of scale-dependent collaborative advantage. WP1 will simulate and evaluate thousands of land use scenarios at the UK-scale to identify which modes of treescape expansion, in combination with other land use/management changes, can deliver a net zero UK land sector. WP2 will focus on two case study landscapes, where we will characterise the interests, goals, and preferences of stakeholders, explore the synergies and trade-offs embodied in co-produced landscape-scale scenarios of treescape expansion, and identify scale-dependent collaborative advantage in the capacities of different actors across local, regional and national scales. WP3 will synthesise the natural, social and political science outputs of WP1&2 to develop local Treescape Expansion Action Plans for each case study landscape, and to evaluate the feasibility of delivering a net zero UK land sector given local barriers. We will also provide guidance on best practices for using participatory approaches to plan treescape expansion. Finally, WP4 will provide cross-cutting support to ensure our research outputs reach the right people in the right format, and that a broad audience is involved in the ensuing discussions about future land use. In sum, STAND will provide an answer to how landscape-scale treescape expansion can be designed and governed across nested scales to achieve the best outcomes for people and nature.

Young people in Norwich aged 16-18 will conduct arts-based research at the local RSPB nature reserve Strumpshaw Fen, investigating impacts of climate change on the reserve and its wildlife over time. They will present their research in a public engagement event of verbatim theatre, also at the Fen, in December 2021. The project aims to: a) engage young people (A-level students) with the impacts of climate change on the environment close to where they live (Strumpshaw Fen near Norwich); b) help young people understand climate change impacts on a specific place and its wildlife (the Strumpshaw Fen reserve); c) link young people's developing understanding of local climate change with global impacts, by considering effects on birds and their migration to and from the reserve; d) afford young people's enjoyment of a nature reserve as means to appreciate its value; e) develop young people's expression and communication in writing, photography and drama, so they can share their understanding with others and for public engagement; f) involve the teachers of the young people in collaborative interdisciplinary research to consider links across school subjects; g) create records of the young people's project activities and performance for sustained public engagement and continuing research. A-level students and their teachers are the immediate target audience. Their school community is a wider target audience as its members will be invited to the public engagement performance created by young people participating in the project. Further audiences include teachers and teacher educators (through regional and national networks); RSPB reserve staff and visitors to reserves and RSPB websites; academic researchers and writers working at the intersection of environmental research and the arts; and the general public of Norwich, Norfolk and East Anglia. Young people will conduct research across two visits to the reserve (one for writing, one for rehearsing their performance) and be introduced to explorations of environment in a) nature writing (identifying research interests and questions in a writing workshop); b) film representations of local environments and changes in them over time; and c) audio from Steve Waters' Voices from the Reeds and Song of the Reeds projects. With the help of experienced writers (Professor Jean McNeil and Professor Steve Waters), teachers and performers specialising in narratives of climate change (Arts Regeneration) young people will prepare their own responses to climate change and its influence on the reserve. During research trips to the reserve, young people will meet with visitors and employees of the reserve, gaining insights to how the community of the reserve responds to climate change. What impacts of climate change does the community identify, and how do its members address them? What do the young people see, hear, touch or smell in the environment of the reserve that tells of the effects of climate change, and of what could yet be lost? The project has potential impact on regional and national education for understanding climate change. The project shares learning and outputs through a) public performance at Strumpshaw Fen; b) performance for peers and parents in the school community of the young people; c) an online teacher CPD event hosted by UEA with contributions by young people; d) via a podcast of the performance and document of the project, hosted by UEA; e) presentation for teaching/education communities via the British Educational Research Association and an article for the Chartered College of Teacher's magazine Impact; and f) report to the leadership group of ClimateUEA for promotion via national and international networks. Young people will be invited to ClimateUEA's COP26 collaboration with UEA's Drama department, which will present a parallel suite of professional performances addressing climate change for public engagement.