The former 'arc of deforestation' of peripheral Amazonia is dominated by extensive pastures and slash-and-burn shifting cultivation. These land management interventions have resulted in severe environmental degradation, restricted agricultural productivity and caused rural poverty. As populations continue to rise, there is a clear need for a more ecologically sustainable intensification of smallholder agriculture with high eco-efficiency and low external inputs. This project aims to create a new research partnership to tackle biodiversity and ecosystems resilience and assess the impacts of ecological intensification (more productive, reduced input sustainable systems) on smallholder farming at the eastern fringe of Amazonia. We will focus on four key priority areas namely: i) landscape ecology; ii) soil carbon and nutrient management; iii) global change biology and iv) conservation and biodiversity. i) Landscape ecology: Ecological intensification of agriculture requires an appreciation of how ecosystem processes at the landscape-scale can be integrated with existing smallholder farming systems, priorities and constraints. Key questions that need to be addressed include: 1) how should forests be managed to deliver optimal livelihood and environmental benefits? and 2) how can we ensure that forest management at the interface with neighbouring farming systems is sustainable and not over-exploited by farming communities? ii) Carbon and nutrients Traditional smallholder farming relies on low input strategies and future efforts must strive to increase resilience to minimize external risks. Sustainable low-input agriculture is difficult to achieve in the humid tropics, due to a combination of factors that reduce nutrient-efficiencies of crops. Key questions to be considered include: 1) how does smallholder land management impact on soil quality and 2) how can soils best be restored? iii) Global change biology Global changes at field, regional and global scales are transforming agriculture and socio-economics and we urgently require a better understanding of the processes and patterns involved. The key questions to be addressed here are: 1) to what extent can crop management mitigate against environment change-related stresses such as droughts, flooding? and 2) what is the short- and long-term effect of salinity intrusions into freshwater wetlands? iv) Conservation and use of biodiversity Biodiversity is essential to the sustainable management of ecosystems. Key questions to include: 1) how might forest wastes benefit farming systems; and 4) how does biodiversity provide more resilience to agricultural landscapes to cope with extreme events?

Environmental change is happening on a global scale. Freshwater ecosystems represent some of the most endangered habitats in the world, with declines in diversity (83% in the period 1970-2014) far exceeding that of terrestrial counterparts. One of the primary causes of reduced riverine ecosystem health is a loss of habitat associated with excessive fine sediment deposition (typically referred to as particles <2mm). Fine sediment is a natural part of river systems, however alterations to land use (e.g. intensive farming) and channelization / impoundment (via dams and reservoirs) have altered the quantity of fine sediment such that inputs now far exceed historic levels. Additionally, increasing hydrological extremes associated with climatic change, such as intense rainfall events, are likely to further increase the delivery of fine sediment to river channels. Fine sediment deposition alters and degrades instream habitats making rivers unsuitable for flora and fauna to live in. Such changes lead to reductions in the biodiversity of riverine ecosystems and affects all components of the food web from fish and insects through to algae. Understanding the ecological implications of fine sediment is therefore imperative to be able to manage our rivers so that they can support and sustain healthy ecosystem functioning and support anthropogenic activities (e.g., fisheries, recreational activities). This is however challenging because a number of environmental factors control the consequences of fine sediment for flora and fauna. The proposed Fellowship aims to understand and quantify which environmental factors (e.g. land use, size of fine sediment and of the gravels within the river, time of year) influence the severity of fine sediment deposition for river communities. Specific objectives are to (i) quantify the trends between fine sediment loading and ecological responses in the UK and internationally; (ii) determine if there is a threshold of fine sediment loading before ecological degradation occurs and how this varies within individual rivers, (iii) develop understanding of how environmental controls (e.g. grain size, hydrological exchange) structure the effects of fine sediment and; (iv) outline a future research agenda to tackle the management of fine sediment in rivers. In achieving these objectives, my Fellowship will provide a framework to determine when and which river types (e.g. highland or lowland, geology) are most at threat from fine sediment pressures internationally. The Fellowship will focus on macroinvertebrates (river invertebrates such as snails, insects and crustaceans) as a target organisms being abundant, diverse and occurring across the globe. The Fellowship represents a novel and exciting research programme with international reach and applicability that combines global datasets with multi-country field and artificial stream channel experiments (alpine and lowland) and laboratory experiments over different spatial scales to develop and validate theories spanning different environmental settings. The fellowship will lead to an exciting step-change in our understanding and will address unique fundamental research questions whilst working synergistically with UK statutory regulatory agencies and end-users such as the Environment Agency of England, Natural Resources Wales and Scottish Environmental Protection Agency. The research generated will have important ramifications for how stakeholders allocate resources to monitor and manage UK riverine ecosystems and will enable more efficient and targeted conservation and restoration plans.

'Learning from the past to inform the present and inspire the future' - Atkins Group The anthropologic and archaeological study of pre-Columbian people of the Amazon Basin has revealed sophisticated agricultural practices. Notwithstanding the absence of historical written records, the biological evidence of these practices remains in the remarkable soils referred to as Amazonian 'dark earths' (ADEs), or "Terra Preta do Indio", produced by these ancient civilisations to promote highly productive and sustainable agriculture. With increasing global demand for food, energy and carbon, it is crucial to understand and learn from past land use systems. We can also learn from the influence of these historical practices on the associated biodiversity in order to appropriately manage the current and plan the future land uses. This understanding is essential for both economic and environmental sustainability, and to provide for the needs and aspirations of current and future generations, while simultaneously conserving the ecological fidelity of the resource base on which they depend. This is particularly important with respect to soils and their intrinsic and diverse living organisms, because they sustain plant production (thus, they are at the base of the human food production chain), and have important consequences for water quality and availability. Furthermore, soils are a vast storehouse for biodiversity including many invertebrate species that contribute a number of essential ecosystem services, although most of these species remain mostly unknown, unseen and disregarded. By promoting the interdisciplinary connection between anthropology/archaeology, soil ecology and genomics, we will be able propose to integrate and harness the research expertise of internationally renowned scientists to investigate both the relationship of ADEs to the associated extant biodiversity, reveal details of past and current anthropogenic impact on the natural surroundings, as well as new clues regarding settlement dynamics over a large part of Brazil. Therefore, this project's intention is to contribute to the knowledge of soil animal biodiversity and its relationship with soil fertility and land use changes in a mega-diverse biome (Amazonia). Our objectives will be accomplished by: 1. Assessing the current soil biodiversity assemblages to gain knowledge about the functioning and potential role of soil ecosystem engineers, organic matter and nutrients to the formation of these extremely fertile soils; this novel approach will aid in understanding the origin and sustainable management of ADEs as well as highly weathered and acid soils under humid tropical conditions. 2. Using DNA barcoding to describe the diversity of the ecosystem engineer community associated with past and recent settlements throughout the Amazonian Basin. 3. Using genomics of a peregrine species closely related with human landscape domestication to mirror the human exchanges and flow among the Neotropical rainforest associated with the migration of Amazonian Indians. This will be achieved by integrating the state-of-the-art methods in The state-of-the-art 'tools' that the collaborating network of scientists will bring to bear on the study objectives include invertebrate morphology, molecular genetics, and computational analyses with incorporation of pre-existent and new ecological, anthropological and environmental metadata. Furthermore, the proposed project will establish a collaborative network involving a multi-disciplinary, multi-institutional team of researchers in different areas of Brazil and, therefore, solidifying the connection between the European Community and Brazil, in particular between Cardiff University and Embrapa.