This project aims to improve the ability of ODA countries to forecast and mitigate volcanic activity, by using satellite data to improve volcano monitoring. According to the UN Global Assessment of Risk, over 90% of the total global volcanic threat is in developing countries, but 25% to 45% of historically active volcanoes were found to have no ground-based monitoring. Space-based methods offer a means to bridge the monitoring gap. Our survey of ODA volcano observatories identified two main activities that would improve uptake: 1) accessible automatic processing and 2) training in interpretation. This proposal brings together NERC-funded research on the application of Earth Observation data to volcanic processes with EPSRC-funded research in image analysis to develop automated processing and analysis systems. Our project partners, with whom we have long-standing relationships, represent an LDC (Ethiopia) and an UMIC (Ecuador) and will work with us to develop an accessible web platform to disseminate appropriate products. The proposal consists of three objectives: 1) to develop a suitable web platform to disseminate automatically processed satellite imagery; 2) to build capacity in ODA countries to access and interpret satellite data and 3) implement and refine algorithms to flag volcanic unrest and develop an alert system. The products will be developed with our project partners and launched globally at the Cities on Volcanoes conference 2020.

Almost half of food plants are vegetatively propagated including four of the ten most economically important species worldwide. Yet we know very little about vegetative crop history - for example, how long they have been cultivated, and where - because vegetative tissues rarely preserve in the archaeological record. In this project we will develop new methods combining phytoliths (silica microfossils that exist inside most plant cells) with macro-botanical archaeological methods, as well integrating ethnohistoric, genomic and biogeographical information to reveal the evolutionary history of vegetative agriculture in Ethiopia. Ethiopia is potentially Africa's most important center of crop diversity, characterised by both the evolution and domestication of multiple vegetative species. We will specifically focus on the major food security crop enset, or "Ethiopian false banana" (Ensete ventricosum), a tree-like perennial banana relative. Enset supports some of the densest populations in sub-Saharan Africa and is the staple for 20 million people. It is cultivated over a wide elevational range and ecological gradients, exists at very high biomass densities and has a deep cultural association with multiple ethnic groups. As such enset offers an ideal model for studying long-term adaptation, diversification and interaction with culture. Our major objective is to test whether vegetative landrace patterning (i.e. the distribution of enset crop diversity) is primarily evolved through: i) Environmental adaptation - meaning that crop diversity is generated through adaptation to environmental diversity such as cooler and drier locations; ii) Cultural mechanisms - for example management traditions and variety preferences such as taste, or; iii) The antiquity of exploitation - in other words, enset could be most diverse where it has been cultivated the longest. Long-term evidence for enset in agriculture will come from key archaeological sequences, already collected across a series of sites in the Ethiopian Highlands, and being processed by partners in Ethiopia, USA and Germany. But we must refine the methods to interpret these remains by undertaking a comparative study of phytoliths considered against phylogenetic position and potential plasticity due to growth environment. We will complement this with analysis of charred food remains recovered from macrobotanical assemblages using methods developed at UCL. At Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, we will develop additional lines of evidence using herbarium collections, 50-200 years old, to build a dated phylogenetic tree using DNA data from ~ 900 contemporary landraces. These data will provide new hypotheses to explore archaeologically in terms of the cultural and adaptational history of this crop. Finally, ethnobotanical fieldwork will document present-day diversity across different cultural regions in the southwestern highlands and the extent to which agricultural and cultural changes in recent decades have altered patterns of local landrace diversity. Accounting for these changes will help us distinguish the influence of introduced crops and the agricultural revolution from long term historical patterns. This research addresses key issues at the interface of indigenous agrobiodiversity and its role in future resilience to climate change, through better understanding rates of knowledge and landrace loss, as well as drivers of change. The project will create a better understanding of both the past development and future potential of vegeculture from a global perspective. Vegetative species are amongst the least studied 'orphan crops', with major knowledge gaps about their biology, cultivation, processing and domestication. The project will specifically contribute to debates concerning food security and climate change resilience in the Ethiopian highland centre of diversity.

TRAFIG introduces a novel perspective on protracted displacement situations (PDS) that will improve the protection and resilience of refugees and enhance trust and cooperation between refugees and host communities. It considers the transnational and local connectivity of displaced people and host communities as well as their capability of mobility as socioeconomic and socio-psychological resources that displaced people use and upon which their resilience relies. The project will develop a rapid assessment tool to identify the most vulnerable groups in PDS and to analyse interactions between displaced and host communities. As an evidence-based tool for creating impact, it will support policymakers and practitioners to enhance the self-reliance of displaced people as well as host-refugees relations through tailored programming and policy development. We closely cooperate with key stakeholders throughout the entire life cycle of the project. Our research is based on a novel concept of transnational figurations of displacement that combines the figuration model – a meso-level approach emphasizing the networks of interdependent human beings – with the transnationalism approach and state-of-the-art knowledge on forced displacement. Through comparative empirical research, both qualitative and quantitative, in camps and urban settings at sites in Asia, Africa, and Europe, TRAFIG will answer the following questions: (1) How do displaced people gain access to and make use of humanitarian and migration policies and programmes? (2) Why and how do displaced people live in vulnerable situations and sustain their livelihoods? How can policy support their self-reliance? (3) How do transnational networks shape refugees’ experiences and trajectories? (4) Which processes structure relations between displaced people and host communities? (5) What are the medium and long-term economic impacts of PDS?

Young Lives (YL) is the largest and most comprehensive mixed-methods longitudinal study in the Global South following the lives of 12,000 young people dispersed across more than 80 rural and urban sites in Ethiopia, India, Peru and Vietnam for the past two decades. The study offers a timely opportunity to examine risk and protective factors for mental health from infancy to young adulthood, something which is unique in a comparable multi- country setting. Identical assessments and measures in several domains (physical and mental health, cognitive, social-emotional) have been implemented over a 20-year period. This proposal will enhance the design and data collection of the seventh YL survey round to capture the mental health and subjective well-being of the 22- and 29-years old YL respondents; to include a cortisol measurement from individual hair samples to be used as an "objective measure" of stress and to collect information about young people’s experiences and responses to shocks, including climate-, covid-19- and conflict in the case of Ethiopia. We have the opportunity to contribute to the creation of unique open-access data providing an invaluable resource for our understanding of the lifetime and proximate risk and protective factors for young people’s mental health and well-being.