Proposed project: The risks to UK forests from pests, disease and droughts are poorly understood as historical data is of limited use. This brings risk management and mitigation challenges for forest carbon projects, timber production and insurance. The original PURE project developed a model to assess the future risk from pests and diseases (P&D) for forest carbon projects under the UK's Woodland Carbon Code. In this project, we build this PURE work (NERC/PA 13-021), NERC research (NE/I022183/1, NE-J019720-1, NE/I019405/1), and well-established collaborations (see e.g. Forest-Risk Network) to: (a) embed our PURE P&D risk work within operational-decision making under the Woodland Carbon Code (WCC) (b) expand the operational use of this work from forest carbon to forest timber and (c) develop new insurance products. This process will then be replicated to adapt and operationalise a drought risk assessment model (Petr et al. 2014), which produces information inadequate for WCC and insurance purposes. The science from both models will then inform the development of best practice/guidance and decision support tools to meet the needs of the WCC, timber industry, insurance sector as well as the wider private and public forest sectors. The PURE Associate's risk management expertise (originally acquired in investment banking and developed and applied to natural hazard risks to forest finance projects through the NERC and PURE projects listed above) will be partnered with that of stakeholders from the Forestry Commission, Forest Research and ForestRe (an insurance organisation designing insurance and reinsurance products) to deliver these outcomes. The work is needed due to the critical importance of forests to the UK and the urgent need to reduce the threat from P&D and drought. Action is needed now due to the long timescales inherent in forest management. Woodland and forest cover about 13% of the total land area of Great Britain (Forestry Commission, 2013). The primary wood processing and forestry sectors contribute £1.92bn in Gross Value Added to the economy and generate employment for over 39,000 (Forestry Commission, 2013). The wider social and environmental benefits of woodlands are worth around £1.5bn annually (Willis et al., 2003). Forests provide important wildlife habitat and host 130 of the 400 species in the UK's 1994 Biodiversity Action Plan. They also play an important role in mitigation of, and adaptation to, climate change e.g. carbon sequestration (Read et al., 2009). However, UK forests face significant threats from natural hazards such as wind, fire, pests, diseases (P&D) and drought. Whilst the risks from wind and fire are relatively well-understood - the future risks from P&D and drought are poorly understood and insurance is rarely provided primarily due to a lack of appropriate information. Historical data can provide some indication of the future risks to forests from fire and wind, but are less useful for predicting losses from P&D as new P&D can arise; existing ones can jump species; and vectors, such as shipping and imported saplings, can bring new P&D to a country at any time. Similarly, historical data are of little use to determine the risk of planting tree species in regions at the limit of the trees' climatic tolerances. This increases their vulnerability to drought. This lack of adequate risk measurement constrains risk management for forest carbon projects and mitigation by insurance. The project outputs will include a revised P&D model and a revised drought risk assessment, which will produce this missing information. The results will be used to support operationalisation into better risk management procedures under the WCC; development of new insurance products; and the revision of decision support tools for forest managers to support adaptive management against these risks. The results will be communicated and disseminated to the wider forest sector.

The proposed work builds on a project that aimed to encourage greater use of hospital grounds for health and well-being benefit. It will utilise materials produced within the project such as workshop frameworks, an engagement toolkit and greenspace intervention evaluation guidance to disseminate knolwedge to health services managers, clinical staff, other health care workers, environmental sector professionals and voluntary sector agencies about how to get staff, visitors and patients using healthcare buildings' grounds and adjacent 'public' greensapce for health and well-being benefit. The main activities will be: (i) Combined dissemination and training workshops for health service managers and clinical staff. (ii) Cross-sector (health, environment, public and voluntary) networking and exchange events. Each of these activities will be held at three sites within the NHS Forth Valley region; one in NHS Highalnd and an additional two sites in other Scottish health board areas. We will hold workshops at which NHS staff, environmental sector staff and voluntary sector staff can learn about the knowledge and materials generated in our original project. The workshops will involve training in tools and methods for encouraging greenspace use through participatory planning; leading conservation and other outdoor activities; and monitoring and measuring the benefits of outdoor activities. As a result of the workshops, the stakeholders will devise a plan for activities and small changes that could be made at their healthcare settings (e.g. healthcare centres) to encourage people to use the outdoors for health and well-being benefit. These plans will outline the roles that stakeholders such as the NHS, Forestry Commission, Local Authority and local voluntary sector will play in the future development of greenspace activities. Taking part in the workshops will equip stakeholders with the tools needed to plan and deliver greenspace activities at various types of healthcare setting. This work will help build relationships between the health, environment and community sectors for the management and use of outdoor spaces associated with, or adjacent to, healthcare buildings. The work aims to bring health and well-being benefits to staff, patients and community members through their increased use of such spaces.

Woodlands provide a number of benefits to people, including timber production, areas for recreation, and the storage of carbon, which can help reduce the risk of climate change. Such benefits are referred to as 'ecosystem services'. Woodlands are also an important habitat for wildlife, including both tree species and the plants and animals that depend on them. However, woodlands in the UK, and in many other parts of the world, are currently at risk, because of the combined effects of climate change, aerial pollution, overgrazing and the spread of pests and diseases. These factors can interact with each other, leading to the collapse of wooded ecosystems and their replacement with other plant communities. Research is needed to identify which woodland areas are at risk of such collapse occurring, so that appropriate management responses can be identified. Information is also needed on the potential impacts of such "ecosystem thresholds", both on wildlife and on humans, through changes in the provision of ecosystem services. This project aims to provide this information, by studying woodlands in the New Forest National Park. Here, we will examine data that have been collected over a period of 50 years in a woodland in which many trees have recently died, but have not been replaced. We will use this information to see whether any indicators can be identified, which could be used to predict whether such collapses might occur in other woodlands in the future. We will also study the potential impacts of the loss of tree species, as might result from a pest or disease outbreak, both on wildlife and the provision of ecosystem services, throughout the New Forest landscape. We will also explore the possible impacts of other types of environmental change, including climate change, aerial pollution and overgrazing. We will examine impacts on nutrient cycling, carbon storage, timber production and the value of woodlands for recreation. This will be achieved using a combination of field data and computer models, which we will use to forecast how such impacts might occur at the landscape scale. The project will help increase understanding of how major ecological changes occur in woodlands, and their potential impacts. This information will be of value for identifying which woodlands are particularly at risk of ecological collapse, and how such problems may be averted in future, through the development of appropriate management and policy responses.

Critical infrastructure in upland landscapes can be damaged by landslides and debris flows, and managing and mitigating the risks posed to this infrastructure is a key challenge for infrastructure owners. In addition, landslides and debris flows do not respect ownership boundaries, and third party landowners can find themselves liable for mass movements originating from their land, whereas infrastructure owners have to manage hazards from beyond their holdings. In addition, transport owners and maintaining agents must be able to plan on works to be delivered at the right time and in the right place. Planning efficient spending has a number of challenges, including persistent uncertainty in how changes in climate and land use affect future landslide susceptibility and limited capability to make effective use of high resolution digital datasets (e.g. LiDAR surveys) to model landslide scenarios. This project will develop software for producing landslide hazard maps at regional scales incorporating the highest resolution topographic and land use data. It builds on previous hazard research at the University of Edinburgh and the British Geological Survey, and is built to work in a mulitcore, supercomputing environment--the software can handle big data in the form of very high resolution LiDAR surveys that provide information on slopes at the sub-metre scale: the scale at which mass movements and the hydrology that drive them operate. In addition, the software will be designed to provide scenario modelling. In particular, one of the major drivers in changes in landslide hazard is changing root cohesion from different vegetation patterns along transport corridors. The project will assimilate forestry data from Forest Research so that we can investigate the planting and harvesting schedule that minimised landslide risk, and also determine the time at which transport corridors are most threatened by landsliding. The ultimate objective of the project is to provide a software tool that land owners, infrastructure owners and maintaining agents can use to better plan mitigation and spending strategies.

Context ‘The Places that Speak to Us and the Publics We Talk With’ develops the work of two Networks funded under the Researching Environmental Change Network call: ‘Local Places, Global Processes: Histories of Environmental Change’ and ‘Cultural Spaces of Climate’. ‘Local Places’ revolved around three site-specific workshops on location at Wicken Fen (Cambridgeshire), Quantock Hills (Somerset), and Kielder Water and Forest Park (Northumberland). At each venue, we worked with a formal project partner - the National Trust, the AONB service and Northumbrian Water, respectively - and forged relationships with other environment management organizations, including the Forestry Commission and the Wildlife Trusts. We combined indoor pursuits such as academic papers, presentations by project partners and round table discussions involving partner representatives, with direct engagement with the locales themselves. The Cultural Spaces of Climate’ Network was more orientated towards traditional academic discourse in the seminar room, and entailed innovative engagement with arts and humanities representatives, the broader research community, learned and professional societies and the public sector, to identify ways to redress the global and scientific bias in climate discourse, to explore the meaning of climate for different groups in different spatial and temporal contexts and to interrogate climate’s ontological status. This joint proposal from the ‘Local Places’ Investigators and the Principal Investigator for ‘Cultural Spaces of Climate’ combines their experience and expertise in pursuit of a new round of activities that develops the original research agendas but uses them in combination to shed light on how processes of communication and the transformation of meaning in different contexts shape understanding of the environment, through the structured interaction of different research strands engaging with a variety of publics. Aims and Objectives The principal aims are: 1. To generate innovative and productive knowledge exchanges between academics studying past environmental change from arts and humanities perspectives and professionals – our project partners – who manage environments and address environmental change. 2. To endeavour to contribute to management decisions by applying perspectives that take account of human perceptions, community involvement and other cultural considerations. Our longer term aim is to help inform public policy. 3. To examine, through the inter-relations of our different sub-projects embracing the broad category ‘the environment’, how different methods, contexts and publics, and processes of communication across these elements, shape environmental understanding and the translation of understanding across audiences. 4. To pursue a range of projects, workshops and events in collaboration with partners to secure these ends. Some of these undertakings are directly related to previous workshops and Network outputs: an interview project, with professionals involved in managing the site and local community members, and a workshop to advance the book arising from ‘Local Places’. Others are spin-offs: the Quantock Orchard Project to research the role of orchards in the local landscape; Walking Militarized Landscapes to devise walks around military training estates; a public lecture series on ‘Environmental Visions’ at Wicken Fen. These projects develop existing partner relationships (National Trust, AONB service and Northumbrian Water) and formalize links with the Forestry Commission and the Royal Geographical Society (With Institute of British Geographers). We bring the two Networks’ research directly together by investigating local co-production and reception of climate change adaptation strategies adopted by environmental managers. Potential applications and benefits The potential research applications include informing decisions by professionals who manage sites and address environmental change; heightening public awareness of such issues; providing insight on practices of communication and the emergence of meaning for academic and non-academic partners; and contributing to public policy decisions. With these in mind, we also plan a Journalism Workshop convened by Erin Gill, an environmental journalist, to explore how to extract newsworthy stories from our research, convey them in appropriate language and place them to maximize the public as well as scholarly value and impact. We will also hold a follow-up Forests and Woodlands Workshop with Forestry Commission and National Trust support, to bring historical, cultural and social perspectives to key concepts, such as ownership and management, community, access, and value, highlighted at our previous DEFRA meeting (September 2011).