Nature writing in Britain is probably as popular as it has ever been, but it remains critically undervalued. It is also frequently misunderstood. One source of misunderstanding is the view that nature writing supports the myth of stable order --social, moral, ecological-- while another is that it performs a consolatory aesthetics designed primarily to restore its readers to the natural world. These views overlook the significant conflicts that have been embedded within British nature writing ever since it emerged as a modern form in the late eighteenth century. Many of these conflicts are coeval with modernity. How can we know 'nature', and is it really possible to describe it? To what extent is 'nature' a projection of our own individual and collective (national) imaginings? How much can we appreciate it when there is so little of it left? The product of a collaboration between four leading scholars in the field, this project will be the first full-length study of its kind of modern British nature writing, beginning in 1789 with Gilbert White's seminal study, The Natural History of Selborne, and ending in 2014 with Helen Macdonald's prize-winning memoir, H is for Hawk. Between the two lies the jagged history of a genre that emerges under the sign of a triple crisis: the crisis of the environment; the crisis of representation; and the crisis of modernity itself. Emphasis will be placed on non-fictional prose, not because it is the 'truest' form of nature writing, but because it brings out one of the genre's most fundamental tensions: between the desire to set up a mimetic relation to the natural world and the awareness of the impossibility of doing so, for 'nature' is always other to what we imagine it to be, even if we are a part of it ourselves. Methods will be drawn from environmental history and philosophy as well as literary criticism, working together in the spirit of the environmental humanities, which seek to show how text- and discourse-based perspectives on culture, ethics, and history can work together with more empirical forms of scientific research, e.g. those connected with ecology, to produce enhanced understandings of changing human interactions with the natural world. The project will offer fresh readings of some of the classic texts of British nature writing, interpreting these in the light of current understandings of fractured subjectivity, post-equilibrium ecology, and the tangled relationship between humans and other animals in what some recent critical theorists have taken to calling an increasingly 'post-human', even a definitively 'post-natural', world. These understandings are seen by some as underlying the so-called 'new nature writing' that has emerged in Britain over roughly the last three decades; but this writing is not as 'new' as it appears, and one of the tasks of the project will be to confirm the historical grounding of contemporary debates. Only by seeing nature writing historically, it will be argued, can it be defended against the peremptory view that it practises a naive realism, or the hasty conclusion that it adopts a largely devotional attitude to the natural world. On the contrary, nature writing is a highly self-reflexive form: well aware of its own limited understandings, finely attuned to the inadequacy of its own language, and keenly conscious of the illusory nature of its attempts to achieve a three-way reconciliation between self, text, and world. Whether nature writing has potential to transform the world it describes is moot, but nature writing is not an escapist form and the project -- which will combine academic work with a variety of public engagement activities involving co-participants of all backgrounds and ages -- will show how it engages productively with a modern world that is both inhabited by possibly irremediable crisis and haunted by possibly irretrievable loss.

The UK's decision to leave the European Union represents the most substantial change in the governance of UK agricultural land use since the UK's incorporation into the EU's Common Agricultural Policy(CAP) in 1973. This could affect approximately 218 000 agricultural holdings and involve a potentially radical change in the management and governance of 72% of the UK's land. To achieve the UK government's vision of a 'Green Brexit' (Defra, 2018), a new Environmental Land Management (ELM) scheme is in the process of being devised. This will mean that the c.£2.3bn of annual payments to UK farmers will be based upon the principle of 'public money for public goods' (e.g. enhanced biodiversity and improved soil, water and air quality), replacing the current EU CAP system that allocates payments based upon the amount of land owned by the claimant. The Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) - which is the government department responsible for devising and delivering the post-Brexit ELM - has stated that this new policy will be developed in collaboration with stakeholders. In order to contribute to the development of this scheme, this project will work with Defra and multiple stakeholders to develop and test a model for 'co-producing' the post-Brexit ELM scheme. This will improve our understanding of the ways by which the principles and practices of co-production can be applied to help create more effective government policy and identify ways to collaboratively involve the people and organisations most affected by the policy changes at all stages of the process. To help design, deliver and evaluate the post-Brexit ELM policy development process, this project will: 1. Bring together international case studies and academic, policy and stakeholder expertise to understand and develop more effective ways to co-produce the post-Brexit Environmental Land Management policy; 2. Work with active ELM trial projects (through participatory research) to understand 'what works' in terms of governance, participation and how this new approach functions in practice; 3. Involve stakeholders from individual farm level through to Non-Governmental Organisations, industry and policy (including the Devolved Administrations) via workshops and policy labs to help critique and refine the ELM policy; 4. Reflect on how useful this model of co-production is in creating new government policies and in producing impactful academic research The findings of this research will be relevant to the UK Government, agricultural and environmental organisations and to the individuals - primarily farmers and land managers - as they adjust to the reformed relationships that will result from the UK's exit from the EU.

Invasive Non Native Species (INNS) are animals and plants that have been introduced (as a result of human activity) outside their normal range, and which have negative effects on our economy, biodiversity and even health. Aquatic ecosystems (rivers, streams, lakes) are particularly affected by INNS which may be spread by activities such as trade, transport and recreation. The cost to GB of INNS is ~£1.7bn per year (GB Non Native Species Secretariat). Once INNS become established in a river, it is often difficult and expensive to manage them. It is far more cost effective to prevent their introduction in the first place, and to prevent the wider spread of INNS that have established. Such prevention is termed biosecurity. Good biosecurity to prevent the introduction and spread of INNS is a core requirement of the recent EU legislation on Invasive Species and of the GB Invasive Non Native Species strategy. AIM The aim of this proposal is to reduce the risk of the introduction and spread of aquatic INNS in Yorkshire (medium term) and the UK (long term). We will use results from recent research at the University of Leeds and work with project partners from government, charities and business to develop good biosecurity practice in the day-to-day activities of partner organisations as well as the wider community. OBJECTIVES - Identify key invasion pathways by which INNS may arrive - Establish good biosecurity practice/protocols for a range of activities - Develop a biosecurity risk assessment process for events/projects/sites/activities - Promote and disseminate training materials on biosecurity and evaluate uptake and effectiveness. OUR PROJECT PARTNERS ARE: Members of the Yorkshire Dales INNS strategy steering group: The Environment Agency (EA), Yorkshire Water (YW), Yorkshire Wildlife Trust (YWT), Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority (YDNPA), Nidderdale Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (NAONB), Natural England (NE), Forestry Commission (FC), National Trust (NT), Yorkshire Dales Rivers Trust (YDRT), Ribble Rivers Trust (RRT), Dales to Vale River Network (DVRN) Other partners: Yorkshire Invasive Species Forum (YISF), Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA). The project also has the support of the GB Non Native Species Secretariat. OUTCOMES The outcomes that we envisage from this project are twofold; 1) improved regional biosecurity practice adopted by our project partners; 2) improvement of INNS biosecurity nationally through adoption of evidence informed approaches and policy. Both have the impacts of reducing risks and associated costs to our biodiversity and economy of INNS introduction and spread

The Yorkshire Ouse basin, which encompasses the cities of Leeds, York and Sheffield as well as the rivers Aire, Calder, Derwent, Don, Swale, Wharfe, Ure and Nidd is home to 6.7% of the UK population, 30% of the Northern Powerhouse region and includes 10 metropolitan boroughs. The region includes a variety of different environments, from large urban areas to lowland agriculture and sparsely populated uplands including National Parks and Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty. As such, it is a perfect location to instigate a programme of work which uses existing NERC-funded science to identify, develop, test and improve integrated solutions on a range of environmental impacts. This encompasses mitigation of drought and flood risk through improved connectivity between weather forecasting, land management and water resource management; improvements in water quality for both human water supply and rivers/other water bodies; and better management of soils for improved regional food security and carbon storage (in woodlands and peatland). By integrating these aspects of weather, land and water, it will enable better plans to be made for the region that allow for sustainable development as the population grows whilst protecting the valuable natural environment. Ultimately, by creating a region that is better able to deal with a more variable climate, it will become an area that attracts investment as people and their businesses opt to live and work in an area that has adapted to the severe effects of environmental change, with improved quality of life. Many major global companies already have their water headquarters or global environmental head offices in the region together with a range of SMEs and large businesses whose interests include catchment management. As such, there is considerable momentum behind the Yorkshire Integrated Catchment Solutions Programme - Yorkshire iCASP - which seeks to deliver economic and social impacts to the region. Yorkshire iCASP will capitalise on existing NERC-funded science to develop tools, strategies, plans and policies to promote hazard resilience, mitigation of extreme events (floods and droughts), develop flood forecasting capability, improve water quality, enhance soils and farm practice and develop a joined-up approach for land and water management. iCASP has been co-created by partners drawn from local authorities, government agencies, major infrastructure/utility owners, private sector service providers, academic institutions, and third sector organisations who will work together to produce and deliver a work programme that seeks to enhance the economic and societal status of the region. Outcomes from the collaboration will deliver tools and techniques with applicability outside the region, creating services and products which can be used around the world to further benefit the region and the UK economy more generally. Examples of the projects that have been discussed in the work programme include development of green financing enterprises; development of new tools to better link flood forecasting with impacts on rivers and different land management practices; decision-support tools that allow different area-specific flood/drought management scenarios to be evaluated; and raw water management approaches that reduce the cost of water treatment. All will have different, and often multifaceted, impacts on society and the wider environment so another important aspect of iCASP is the documentation and evaluation of the projects implemented as part of the work programme, measuring the changes that they contribute to the regional, and national, economy as well as the growth of iCASP partners through leveraged investment, job creation and wider societal benefits.

Peatlands store more carbon than any other terrestrial ecosystem, both in the UK and globally. As a result of human disturbance they are rapidly losing this carbon to the atmosphere, contributing significantly to global greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. We propose to turn this problem into a solution, by re-establishing and augmenting the unique natural capacity of peatlands to remove CO2 from the atmosphere and to store it securely for millennia. We will do this by working with natural processes to recreate, and where possible enhance, the environmental conditions that lead to peat formation, in both lowland and upland Britain. At the same time, we will optimise conditions to avoid emissions of methane and nitrous oxide that could offset the benefits of CO2 removal; develop innovative cropping and management systems to augment rates of CO2 uptake; evaluate whether we can further increase peat carbon accumulation through the formation and addition of biomass and biochar; and develop new economic models to support greenhouse gas removal by peatlands as part of profitable and sustainable farming and land management systems. Implementation of these new approaches to the 2.3 million hectares of degraded upland and lowland peat in the UK has the potential to remove significant quantities of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, to secure carbon securely and permanently within a productive, biodiverse and self-sustaining ecosystem, and thereby to help the UK to achieve its ambition of having net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.