All types of ecosystems exhibit connectivity at some level. However, connectivity is the quintessential property of aquatic systems. Connectivity matters in freshwaters because it is the means by which energy, materials, organisms and genetic resources move within and between hydrological units of the landscape (the 'hydroscape'). Hydrological connectivity is a particularly effective vector for multiple climatic, biological, chemical and physical stressors, although other forms of connectivity also link freshwater ecosystems. Our proposal addresses the fundamental question of how connectivity and stressors interact to determine biodiversity and ecosystem function in freshwaters. Connectivity is multifaceted. It may be tangible - water moves downhill or over floodplains, or more subtle - terrestrial organic matter is incorporated into aquatic food webs. Animals and people naturally gravitate to freshwaters, thus providing additional dispersal vectors that can carry propagules to isolated sites. Connectivity may be passive or active and occurs across scales from the local to the global. Freshwater scientists recognise the fundamental role of connectivity in key paradigms such as the river continuum and flood pulse concepts. Land-water connectivity is also the founding principle behind catchment management. However, in reality, a long tradition of focusing on individual stressors, sites, taxonomic groups or habitats, has led to a highly disjointed view of the most intrinsically interconnected resource on the planet. While the need for an integrated approach to water management is universally acknowledged, an understanding of this most fundamental part of the infrastructure of freshwaters is lacking. This is a serious obstacle to meeting critical societal challenges, namely the maintenance of environmental sustainability in the face of multiplying human-induced stresses. Without a more integrated view of the freshwater landscape we struggle to answer basic questions. These include (i) how do organisms, nutrients and energy move naturally within and between landscapes? (ii) how is this basic template altered by different stressors, singly or in combination? (iii) how has widespread alteration of land cover and of the basic infrastructure of freshwaters that largely drives connectivity, redistributed pressures and modified their effects? (iv) how should reductions in stressors and changes to connectivity, that are now widely implemented, be prioritised when seeking to restore biodiversity and ecosystem function? Our primary aims are to (1) determine how hydrological, spatial and biological connectivity impact on freshwater ecosystem structure and function in contrasting landscape types, and (2) use this understanding to forecast how freshwaters nationally will respond to (i) multiple, interacting pressures and (ii) management actions designed to reduce pressures and/or alter connectivity. We will achieve these aims by working at different spatial (landscape vs national) and temporal (sub-annual to decadal vs centennial) scales and using a combination of complementary well established and more novel molecular and stable isotope techniques. We will combine existing data sources (e.g. archived sediment cores, biological surveys and the millions of records held in national databases) with targeted sampling to maximise cost effectiveness and achieve a cross habitat and ecosystem wide reach. Landscape scale thinking has become the new mantra of nature conservation and environmental bodies but the knowledge needed to ensure resilience to climate change and to underpin large scale conservation and restoration of aquatic landscapes is currently lacking. In this regard an understanding of how biodiversity and ecosystem function respond to the changing connectivity x stressors arena in freshwaters is critical. The outputs of the proposed research will deliver the integrated understanding of the hydroscape that is now required urgently.

There is a global biodiversity crisis driven by mounting pressures including land degradation and climate change. Within the UK, responses include the Government's 25 Year Environment Plan, which sets out a vision to secure a more biodiverse, connected and resilient landscape. The Natural Capital Committee has argued for the need to secure Net Environmental Gains, and this is a provision of the upcoming Environment Bill. A recent report from the UK Parliamentary Office for Science and Technology highlights the needs to secure our natural capital, not just to support biodiversity, but also ensure the provision of wider ecosystem services. Questions remain, however, as to how we achieve net environmental gain; what should go where? What does success look like? How long may it take to reassemble resilient communities that can reliably deliver ecosystem services? One widely adopted approach to securing net environmental gain is that of "ecological restoration". However, using specific natural and semi-natural ecosystems to define endpoints is increasingly contested, as target "pristine" states are hard to define, climate change is leading to a shifting baseline, and there is a need to restore ecosystems that are resilient to future pressures. We need a new paradigm for goal-seeking in ecological restoration which goes beyond reference systems, is agnostic as to prior assumptions of intactness, integrity and system "health", based on diagnostics of characteristics of functionally intact systems. There is an aspiration across the devolved administrations to deliver net environmental gain in biodiversity across all land uses. However, the restoration of ecological communities has been led by practitioners, with relatively little evidence gathered as to how individual restoration projects link together spatially to enhance the resilience of communities. This consortium brings together leading academic ecologists with a public sector organisation and a charity at the forefront of practical restoration activities, to extract the evidence from past activities through a natural experiment, and test resilience through manipulations. We intend to measure biodiversity, architecture and multifunctionality in ecosystems in different stages of transition from a degraded state, identify determinants and measures of complexity, and seek signals of emergent properties - especially resilience to perturbation. We have chosen grasslands and woodlands, being two major habitat types targeted for restoration programmes. Further to this we shall explore how approaches to accelerating re-integration of systems may affect emergent properties. In summary, we propose to move restoration science forward, but considering complexity and resilience as fundamental aims for restoration projects, rather than attempting to re-create specific target ecosystems.

Describing changes in the natural environment is essential, but in addition the challenge facing regulators and policy makers lies in understanding the links between policy, EU directives and regulation and the actual environmental effects . In 2001, the European Environment Agency reported on 'how much or how little we know about the links between environmental policy measures and their actual impact in the environment' and observed that 'much of the information gathered is of limited use in assessing the impact of environmental measures' (Nigel Haigh, foreword of Environmental Issues, Report 25/EC). Quantifying change, whether as a result of policy and regulation or through climate related change is 'complex and requires multi-disciplinary efforts, including assessment of changes in environmental quality that have been observed'. Some of the most high-profile environmental science issues of today are framed around the analysis of long (and short) observational records, measured over a network of locations and recognising patterns requires statistical modelling, to account for variation in the natural system, incomplete observations and uncertainty. Additionally, policy makers and regulators are being asked to consider planning and regulation under the scenario of climate change (eg frequency of flood events, effect on water quality) thus risk assessment becomes a key driver of regulation, with resources directed according to the risks involved and the scale of outcomes to be achieved. Environment agencies and other NGO's regularly publish 'State of the environment reports' which by their nature allow investigation of change in the environment over time. Scientific and public debates on these issues need to be informed by presentation of existing data along with suitable interpretations drawn from statistical modelling explicitly accounting for variation and uncertainty. Many factors, including climate change, interact to produce a complex environmental signal making the effect of the policy and the magnitude of trend difficult to disentangle. The proposal brings together environmental regulators, managers, civil servants and scientists to develop the skills necessary to ensure that our environment receives the best possible management for future generations.

In good condition, peatlands are the most efficient carbon store of all soils. They regulate freshwater supply (peatlands are 95% water) and quality, mitigate climate change by storing greenhouse gases, and maintain biodiversity. Land use management interventions (e.g. use of peat for agriculture, drainage, forestry, burning for game management and recreation) can compromise the delivery of all these services by destabilising the vast carbon store that peat has locked away over thousands of years. The UK has 2 Mha of peatlands (10% land area), however, up to 80% of these peatlands are damaged to some degree. It is estimated that degraded UK peatlands emit 10 Mt C a-1, a similar magnitude to oil refineries or landfill sites, placing the UK among the top 20 countries for emissions of carbon from degrading peat. Restoring degraded peatlands to halt carbon losses is an essential part of a global strategy to fight climate change. However, to date, we do not have a tool to help us assess how land use affects peatland condition in a cost effective manner over large and often remote areas, making it difficult to identify which areas should be prioritised for management intervention. In the UK, several millions of pounds of public money have already been invested in large-scale peatland restoration projects yet we do not have a reliable and robust way to evaluate the effectiveness of restoration. These are important gaps in our knowledge that prevent us from being able to make cost-effective choices when it comes to peatland management With this project, we will develop new statistical methods to detect change in the condition of peatland landscapes from data collected by satellites. In a previous research project, we showed that peatland condition can be found from satellite data that measures surface motion of the peat. A wet peat in good condition displays very different characteristics to dry peat in poor condition. However, our satellite-based approach produces too much complex data that cannot be reliably and consistently analysed by eye. We aim to inform peatland management decisions by developing a new statistical method that can robustly and consistently quantify the changes in the peatland landscape from the satellite data. This requires methods capable of handling extremely large and complex structured datasets. In statistics, a new framework, known as Object-Oriented Data Analysis (OODA), is ideally suited to achieve this purpose by building models based on suitable choices of data objects. OODA can be used for developing parsimonious models for detecting change, and for quantifying uncertainty in predictions. OODA of the satellite data as functions of space and time will enable the modelling of trends and variability in the different regions, and the detection of reg change in the peatland. Our project will develop the OODA method further than its current capabilities and apply this method to the satellite datasets of peat surface motion. The result will be a series of maps that illustrate the change in peatland landscape over time that are designed to be used by land managers and policy makers to guide decision making. This will help reduce unnecessary spending and prioritise the most urgent and strategic areas for peat restoration. Our novel approach combining state-of-the-art statistical methods with satellite data will provide a reliable tool to evaluate investments in peat restoration and report to funding bodies. The ability to quantify changes in the peat landscape using statistics should provide confidence to peatland managers and to those who fund and invest in peatland restoration, enabling them to make better choices for peatlands.

As well as being important in human and agricultural populations, it is increasingly recognised that infectious disease has important impacts in natural systems. In particular it is now clear that infectious disease can be important in conservation and may affect the ability of foreign organisms to invade natural communities. Ecological theory has been important in showing the general importance of disease in natural systems, but has only been rarely used to direct conservation programs. The project investigators have a track record in translating established research on disease-mediated ecological invasion into mathematical tools that can be used to direct conservation management decisions and policy. This project will answer current, pressing questions outlined by conservation agencies on the red-grey-squirrelpox system in Scotland. The objectives in the project have been specified by the project partners (Scottish Natural Heritage, Scottish Wildlife Trust) who need to know the potential impact of squirrelpox on remaining red squirrel populations, whether grey squirrel control can prevent squirrelpox spread and the critical locations and effort at which control is required. This information is essential to allow our conservation partners to formulate current and future management plans that allocates limited resources in a manner that maximises red squirrel protection. The modelling framework, which predicts temporal and spatial disease dynamics on large-scale, complex landscapes, is the best tool available to underpin these conservation efforts. Therefore, this NERC Innovations proposal provides a unique opportunity to translate established research into effective conservation strategies that provide direct tangible benefits to end-users.