Wild species are under growing pressure from a range of different threats. These include increased temperatures as a result of climate change and new pests and diseases arriving as a consequence of global trade and travel. Many trees around the world currently face such threats, causing them to become stressed and rendering them less able to perform functions that we all benefit from, such as capturing and storing carbon dioxide or reducing flooding risk by decreasing surface water run-off. Ultimately, individuals that are unable to cope with these threats will decline and die, which can not only place whole tree species at risk but also the associated biodiversity that depends on these species. However, despite being large and often long-lived organisms, we know that tree species have the potential to adapt quickly to new challenges in their environment. Large differences between the DNA of individuals, structural variants, may be particularly important for rapid adaptation because they can result in more dramatic changes in phenotype than is the case for small changes to DNA. Until recently it has not been possible to properly evaluate the contribution of SVs to genetic adaptation at the population level - advances in genome sequencing and analysis methods mean this ambitious goal can now be pursued. This project will look at whether structural variants play a key role in how species are able to rapidly adapt to new threats. To test this, we will use the case of ash dieback disease (ADB) in native UK populations of European ash, which presents an exceptional opportunity to analyse the genomic changes involved in evolutionary response to newly imposed sources of stress. The European ash tree is one of the most common woodland trees in the UK and, in last ten years, has suffered severe damage from the invasive fungus that causes ADB. Although most ash eventually die once they are infected with the disease, a small percentage of individuals are resistant and remain healthy even when surrounded by diseased and dying trees. We will sample multiple natural UK populations of ash trees where both healthy and diseased adults that predate the ADB epidemic and healthy and diseased juveniles that established since the disease arrived are present. We will perform whole genome sequencing for hundreds of individuals from each population and also score them for their level of resistance to the disease. Using these data, first we will test for associations between SVs and resistance to ADB to estimate the relative contribution of SVs to resistance, compared with that of single nucleotide variants (SNPs). For SVs or SNPs significantly associated with resistance, we will test for allele frequency shifts between generations in each population and analyse if this is associated with increased resistance to ADB among the younger cohort - a sign that the species is starting to adapt to the disease. This will allow us to establish the comparative importance of SVs for ongoing adaptation. We will then examine the relationship between disease pressure and SV formation rate. Stress may stimulate an elevated rate of SV formation, which by exposing more adaptive mutations to selection could provide a path for rapid adaptive evolution. Finally, we will determine if the accuracy with which genomic data can be used to predict individuals with the greatest level of resistance to the disease (genomic prediction) can be significantly improved by incorporating information on SVs. By advancing understanding of the role of SVs in adaptive evolution to newly imposed selection pressures, and through developing effective strategies for improving genomic prediction, this project will also enhance our ability to predict which individuals are most likely to survive future threats and help to inform actions to manage natural populations for increased resilience and protect biodiversity.

Reimagining the Law of the Forest explores human-forest relationships of rights and responsibility at a time of political awakening to the place of English woodlands in the public consciousness. It comes in the year of the 800th anniversary of the Charter of the Forest, and in the wake of an abandoned government proposal to privatise the entire Public Forest Estate and a subsequent independent public consultation on the future of English woodlands. The consultation advocated the development of a new 'woodland culture', framed in terms of market-based incentives for private landowners to provide ecosystem services; while the original proposal to privatise revealed how little legal protection there is for English public forests at present. The project aims to deepen and re-evaluate our understanding of human-forest relations for two main reasons. First, in the context of national and international priorities on sustainable development the project seeks to draw lessons from legal history and philosophy to contribute towards shaping the future design of forest law and policy for long-term environmental sustainability. It will provide the knowledge to improve the legal protection that forests and woodlands lack. Second, it aims to increase public awareness of the intrinsic and extrinsic value of forests as biodiverse natural habitats that are also rich in resources, cultural and social significance, and essential for the stability of the Earth's climate. The project findings will contribute to the new woodland culture that the public consultation said was needed, and to ensuring that this culture is based on legal protection and shared cultural values towards forests and woodlands. The project will analyse the history of human-forest relations in English law and society over the centuries, which has been characterised by shifts in power and property relations that have driven plunder more than preservation. Today, forests in England represent only around 10% of total land area, compared with 15% 1,000 years ago, and a current European average of 37% (Forestry Commission statistics 2014). Through archival and empirical research, the project will explore the historical basis of human-forest relations in England, the cultural, legal and social factors that have led to the contemporary moral crisis over public forests and woodlands, and the tension between the extent of human needs and rights to exploit forests and our responsibilities to protect them. The project also re-evaluates our relationship with forests drawing upon an emergent area in legal theory known as Wild Law, or Earth Jurisprudence. These ecocentric approaches see nature as an object of human responsibility and hold the potential for synergy between the public rejection of privatisation of the Public Forest Estate and market-based approaches to environmental governance. They have been most influential at an international level in UN General Assembly debates on the Sustainable Development Goals and can be applied practically, in the context of climate change, environmental stewardship, the protection of indigenous peoples' rights, and rethinking property regimes. However, as an emergent area of study, little of this research has focused on Europe, or England and the UK. The project is unique in its interdisciplinary approach to exploring human-forest relations in the context of culture, law and society throughout English history, and the educational and policy potential this offers. Beyond academia, the outcomes of this project will be of interest to policymakers, third sector forest and woodland conservation organisations, forest education institutions, landowners of private woodlands and the general public.

The UK government plans to increase woodland cover as part of its plans to store more carbon, to mitigate climate change. However, many of the UK's trees are threatened by climate change and a range of pests and diseases, which might limit their ability to contribute to carbon storage and the wide range of other benefits delivered by woodlands. We therefore need to make our woodlands resilient to these future threats. Resilience is the ability of a system, such as a woodland, to recover from a disturbance. One commonly proposed approach to increase the resilience of woods is to increase their tree diversity. Thus, spreading the risk amongst many different trees, as we don't know exactly how each tree species will respond to climate change, nor what threats from pests and diseases they may face decades into the future. However, woodland managers have different perceptions of diversity, and how management may best deliver it, and we know that different tree species will support the woodland ecosystem in different ways. Therefore, it is important to combine stakeholders' knowledge with ecological knowledge to identify which tree species and management approaches best deliver diversification that increases resilience. DiversiTree focuses on woods dominated by two conifer species, Scots Pine and Sitka Spruce, as in the year to March 2021 54% of all new woodland was coniferous. Scots Pine is the UK's only native conifer of economic significance. It is planted for timber production but is also the dominant species in the culturally iconic native Caledonian pinewoods. Scots Pine is at risk from the tree disease Dothistroma. Sitka Spruce is not native to Britain but is our most economically valuable tree species and is at risk from invasive bark beetles and climate change. This project addresses four knowledge gaps related to the diversification of woodlands: 1) How do stakeholders understand forest diversity, their diversification strategies, and their visions and ambitions for diverse future forests? 2) Are the microbes found on the leaves of trees more diverse in woodlands with mixed tree species and does this help trees to better defend themselves against diseases? 3) How may diversification of tree species within a wood allow the continued support of woodland biodiversity? 4) How do we implement and communicate management strategies to increase woodland resilience? To address these knowledge gaps, we work across disciplines bringing together ecologists, microbiologists, social scientists, and woodland managers. The Woodland Trust is embedded at the heart of our project to enable us to co-develop and check the feasibility of our results with practitioners. Results from interviews with woodland managers, focus groups and analyses of policy documents, will be used to improve knowledge of the options for woodland diversification, and both the enthusiasm for, and capacity to, implement diversification strategies. The microbes on leaves are important for plant health. Utilizing existing long-term experiments, we will examine the microbes on the leaves of Scots Pine grown in monocultures and in mixed woods. We will assess if the diversity of microbes on a leaf increases as the diversity of tree species increases, and whether this enables the trees to resist existing diseases. Surprising we don't have lists of which species use which trees. This information is required if we are to plant trees that will continue to support woodland biodiversity. We will collate data on the biodiversity hosted by Scots Pine and Sitka Spruce and assess which other tree species could also support the same biodiversity. Finally, we bring the results together to co-develop with practitioners, management strategies for diversification and case studies illustrating how the results can be implemented. The results will be shared via videos, podcasts, social media, and practitioner notes in addition to publications in the scientific literature.

Imagine a line that crosses the longest reach of mainland Britain, from the south coast of England to the north-west of Scotland. Think about the incredible diversity of places and landscapes such a line would traverse and connect: fields, farms & housing estates; shopping centres, roads & railways; schools, factories & mountain-tops. What would happen if you could see that line, interact with it, and hear its hidden voices and the politics of its places as you walked along or across it? This line is 'The Common Line', the brainchild and vision of Exeter-based artist Volkhardt Mueller. This AHRC/EPSRC-funded research development project will provide one means to realise that vision, through exploring how immersive technologies can render it into rich, live experience, and by disclosing and discussing thereof issues of access, knowledge, ownership and commonality. Cultural geographers John Wylie (PI) and Paula Crutchlow (PDRA) from the University of Exeter will work with creative technologists Controlled Frenzy, artists Volkhardt Mueller and John Levack Drever (Blind Ditch), specialists in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and partners from the University of Cumbria to investigate and develop place-based, digitally immersive activities that can bring the concept of The Common Line to life. The project will proceed from an expert GIS-calculated estimation of The Common Line's trajectory across Britain, mapped and made scaleable and interactive. In this development phase, field research will focus on sites in and around the city of Carlisle, Cumbria, which is established as sitting close to the centre of the line. Having opened dialogue with and brokered access via key local landowners and experts, the project team will deploy their varied expertise to create field recordings, data visualisations and performance walks. The outcome of this work will be a web-based or downloadable platform, providing users with a novel placed-based, multi-sensory immersive experience on The Common Line. In creating this platform, we will be especially alert to the potential that the gradations of mediation to be experienced through 'in situ' AR and VR, and will pay attention to how their combination can create not only deepened layers and rhythms of experience, but also points of interruption and dislocation. In terms of further development and scaleability, we will develop our work through open source data and code; this will secure its future accessibility to users, and its ongoing potential evolution as a resource for other digital technologists to work with and develop. The Common Line project more widely calls public attention to pressing questions concerning place, environment and identity in contemporary Britain. Like all human-made land-lines and borders, it has an arbitrary quality. Like all such lines, it both connects and divides - it brings people together, and it pushes them apart. The production and testing of a digitally-immersive experience of place on The Common Line will expose participants, and future wider publics, to questions of ownership and belonging over time, and of what is held in common across Britain's places and landscapes.

It has been reported that the time-of-year of many typical indicators of spring, such as egg laying in birds and flowering in plants, has been changing in recent decades. Many of these recurring biological events now happen earlier in the year than they did just a few decades ago. This is believed to be one of the most conspicuous biological impacts of climate change. Far from trivial, these changes could disrupt seasonal relationships between species. This is because different species have changed their seasonal timing to different extents. For example, predators such as some woodland birds may now need to feed their chicks at a time of year at which peaks in their insect food no longer occur, whereas these events may once have coincided. Such changes in the seasonal synchronisation of different species have the potential affect numbers of offspring produced and the survival of populations. A few studies on a small number of species suggest that predators and prey may become de-synchronised because they have different responses to a warming climate but we do not currently know whether this is a general pattern that holds across a large number of species. We also do not currently know how much the observed changes in the timing of spring events has been affected by human-induced climate change, rather than climate change brought about by natural causes. The current project aims to address these gaps in our knowledge by analysing thousands of long-term studies on hundreds of UK plant and animal species and showing whether predatory species have, on average, different responses to climate change compared to their prey and whether these changes are likely to be effects of the human-induced component of climate change. We also aim to establish the regions of the UK, and habitats, in which possible de-synchronisation between predators and prey is most likely by focussing on birds and the insects on which they feed their chicks. This is the first time that so many species from marine, freshwater and dry-land environments have been analysed in a way that allows meaningful comparisons to be made between them, and that allows a statement to be made about the likely significance of human-induced warming for the functioning of a wide range of UK ecosystems.