Plants interact with diverse communities of microbes, which constitute their microbiome, and which have major impacts on their growth and development. In most ecosystems the microbiome is dominated by mycorrhizal symbioses, in which the plant provides the fungus with sugars and lipids in exchange for nutrients assimilated by the fungus from the soil. The most widespread mycorrhizal symbiosis is the arbuscular (AM) type, which is recognized as a key determinant of ecosystem processes, through its role in biogeochemical cycling and in supporting the diversity and productivity of plant communities. Until recently, it was assumed that the fungi which form AM comprise the phylum Glomeromycota, and our understanding of the ecosystem roles of AM is based almost exclusively on this group of fungi. However we have recently shown that fungi which form the distinctive 'fine root endophyte (FRE)' AM morphotype are members of the Order Endogonales within the phylum Mucoromycota so that the AM symbiosis is actually formed by two distinct groups of fungi which diverged over 700 million years ago. Although we know that FREs are globally distributed and can be abundant within ecosystems we know almost nothing about the diversity, ecology or ecosystem function of the fungi involved. However, evidence suggests that FRE and Glomeromycota have contrasting interactions with the environment and may perform different functional roles in ecosystems. In this project we will use existing DNA archives collected as part of the NERC Countryside Survey to determine the diversity and abundance of FREs across major British habitat types, and compare the environmental, vegetation and climatic factors which determine distribution of FREs and Glomeromycota. Currently FRE are 'dark fungi' known only as environmental sequences. Our research suggests that FREs represent multiple species, and we will collaborate with Australian and Swedish researchers to define these based on both their genetics and morphology, and determine the extent to which these have global distribution patterns. We have evidence to suggest that FREs and glomeromycota have different interactions with soil phosphorus, with FREs more abundant under conditions of very low phosphorus availability. We will collaborate with Irish researchers to investigate how soil phosphorus status affects diversity and abundance of FREs using a unique 50 year pasture experiment in Wexford. We will establish whether FREs function as mutualistic symbionts which promote plant growth and nutrient supply, similar to the interactions that Glomeromycota have with their host plants. A key part of the programme will be to assemble genomes of FREs and use these to understand the functional roles of FREs in ecosystems, and the interactions which determine their distribution across ecosystems. Since FREs can't be grown in the absence of plants, or under pure culture conditions, we will take advantage of emerging long read DNA sequencing technology which now opens the exciting possibility of assembling FRE genomes directly from DNA extracted from environmental metagenomes. In addition to providing fundamental understanding of the diversity and function of the AM formed by FREs, we will provide technological advances which will facilitate a major advance in our ability to characterise the function and ecological significance of microbial eukaryotes such as fungi and protists, which are largely unculturable and have been neglected in environmental genome sequencing efforts to date.

Having more carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere has increased rates of photosynthesis, promoting greater tree growth and carbon storage in forests. This process is called 'CO2 fertilisation' and results in 2-3 billion tonnes of carbon being removed from the atmosphere each year, which is 25-30% of the carbon put into the atmosphere by human activity annually. CO2 fertilisation, thus, greatly reduces rates of global warming. The fight against climate change relies on CO2 fertilisation continuing into the future; the Paris climate agreement emphasises that global efforts are required to limit the amount of carbon we release to that which trees, soil, and oceans can absorb naturally. Increased carbon storage in mature forests, due to CO2 fertilisation, is considered to be the most important reason for the current carbon uptake. But, looking forward, it is highly uncertain whether such high rates of uptake will continue, because the production of plant biomass also requires the uptake of nutrients from soils. The availability of key nutrients (especially nitrogen and phosphorus) may severely limit the ability of trees in mature forests to continue to grow more rapidly. Studying mature forests is particularly important when determining whether nutrient availability may limit future carbon uptake by land ecosystems. Firstly, as discussed above, mature forests are likely the most important absorbers of carbon on land; secondly, nutrient availability is generally low in mature forests because the roots of mature trees may have already fully explored their soils in their search for key nutrients. If mature forests are unable to access more nutrients in the future and maintain their carbon uptake, then this would have major implications for our society. It would mean that we would have to reduce our carbon dioxide emissions by a greater extent, and more rapidly than currently expected, if we are to avoid the most serious consequences of climate change. Temperate forests currently absorb almost as much carbon as the emissions from all EU nations. While tropical rainforests are, of course, important, mature temperate forests are calculated to be fourfold more efficient at absorbing carbon, and so merit special attention. To be able predict how mature temperate forests will respond in the future, it is critical that we determine whether greater carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere will allow mature trees in temperate forest to: 1) take up more nutrients from soils, and/or, 2) increase the efficiency with which they use available nutrients to produce new plant tissue. Manipulating CO2 for whole stands of mature forest is challenging and expensive, and until now there has been no experiment that would have allowed us to address the uncertainties discussed above. All this has changed with the establishment of a new experimental facility in mature oak forest in central England. Leveraging a £15m philanthropic gift and an equivalent University of Birmingham investment, a whole-ecosystem free-air carbon dioxide enrichment (FACE) experiment has been set-up, which is successfully forest patches to CO2 concentrations more than one third higher than current levels. In the FACE ecosystem, the canopy trees are at least 160 years old and the site has been forested for the last 400 years. QUINTUS aims to carry out the detailed measurements of nutrient cycling (more than 20,000 analyses) that are required to answer the two key processes outlined above and, thus, determine how a mature temperate forest responds to rising atmospheric CO2. This new experimental understanding will then be used to develop and test the next generation of the computer models which are used to predict future rates of climate change. QUINTUS will deliver a foundational change in our understanding of future C uptake in temperate forests, and in mature forests generally. Such an advance is urgently required and has major societal relevance.

This research aims to extend theory for probabilistic risk analysis of continuous systems, test its use against forest data, use process models to predict future risks, and develop decision-support tools. Risk is commonly defined as the expectation value for loss. Most risk theory is developed for discrete hazards such as accidents, disasters and other forms of sudden system failure. Less theory has been developed for systems where the hazard variable is always present and continuously varying, with matching continuous system response. We can think of dynamic systems whose performance varies with ever-changing resource availability or other dynamic constraints, e.g. crop growth depending on water supply, or urban health as a function of air pollutant concentration. Risks from such continuous hazards (levels of water, pollutants) are not associated with sudden discrete events, but with extended periods of time during which the hazard variable exceeds a threshold. To manage such risks, we need to know whether we should aim to reduce the probability of hazard threshold exceedance or the vulnerability of the system. In earlier work (Van Oijen et al. 2013, http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/1/015032), we showed that there is only one possible definition of vulnerability that allows formal decomposition of risk as the product of hazard probability and system vulnerability (R = p[H] V). We have used this approach to analyse risks from summer droughts to the productivity of vegetation across Europe under current and future climatic conditions (Van Oijen et al. 2014, http://www.biogeosciences.net/11/6357/2014/bg-11-6357- 2014.html). This showed that climate change will likely lead to greatest drought risks in southern Europe, primarily because of increased hazard probability rather than significant changes in vulnerability. We plan to improve on this preliminary theoretical work in different ways: - Add one more major risk component to the analysis: exposure to the hazard, so that risk becomes the product of three terms. That will allow distinguishing between hazards that only affect few individuals or points in space to those that affect larger populations and areas. - Derive equations for quantifying the uncertainties in our estimates for risk and its components. Only with quantified uncertainties can the estimates play a legitimate role in decision-support. - Relax assumptions underlying previous work and develop the theory for any type of joint probability distribution for hazard, exposure and vulnerability. This will likely require the use of extreme value theory and numerical estimation using Bayesian hierarchical modelling. - Test our equations and numerical algorithms on both observed and simulated data in this research. Observational data will be from forests in the U.K., Spain and Finland. Simulated data will be generated by process-based modelling of forest response to climate change. - Analyse the underlying causes of vulnerability, as represented by the parameters and processes of the process-based forest model. - Show the wider implications of the risk decomposition and the uncertainty quantification, by embedding the equations in Bayesian decision theory to allow identification of optimal drought management measures. - Develop an interactive web application as a tool for preliminary exploration of risk and its components to support decision-making. The work will be carried out by CEH-Edinburgh in close collaboration with Biomathematics and Statistics Scotland (BioSS, part of the James Hutton Institute, Aberdeen) and Forest Research UK (Alice Holt, Aberdeen, Edinburgh). Data and expertise from Spain and Finland will be provided by two Project Partners: the University of Alcalá (Madrid, Spain) and the Natural Resources Institute (Luke-Helsinki, Finland).

Biodiversity is under increasing pressure, with consequent impacts on the benefits people gain from nature. This means that it is vital to include biodiversity in our decision-making and for this we need high quality, fine-resolution, spatial biodiversity information. With this information we can better value nature, and this can be done formally through a process called 'natural capital' assessment, such as by government agencies or local economic partnerships. We also need this information to develop better plans for protecting nature, undertaking ecological restoration to develop resilient ecological networks, and make good decisions about infrastructure development (to achieve net biodiversity gain, as is the ambition in Defra's 25 Year Environment Plan). Much of our existing biodiversity information comes from volunteer-collected species records (a process often called 'citizen science'). However, in many cases, people record where and when they want - leading to large spatial unevenness in recording, both at a national scale and at a local scale. The people and organisations who need to use biodiversity information don't simply require more records: they require better information. This requires us to construct good biodiversity models generated from the available data, communicate these models well, and preferentially target effort to add records from times and places that optimally improve the model outputs. This project seeks to achieve all of this by addressing three important questions. Firstly, can we enhance existing biodiversity information through near real-time, fine resolution, species distribution models? Secondly, can we make biodiversity information more accessible and useful to end users through data flows and automated data communication? Thirdly, can we encourage adaptive sampling behaviour in recorders, by using intelligent digital engagements, so that they re-deploy a portion of their effort to optimally improve biodiversity models? Our team is expertly placed to address these questions because we are a multidisciplinary team (environmental, computer, social and data scientists), and we will use a service design approach that actively engages data users (from national to local levels) and biodiversity recorders alongside the research team. In this project we will produce fine-resolution distribution models for about 1000 insect species across the UK (in this study focusing on butterflies, moths and grasshoppers) using earth observation sensor data, and a data lab (an online analysis platform) to automatically update outputs as new data are available. It is important to communicate these results and their uncertainty so, in collaboration, with data end users we will develop interactive and automatically-generated visualisations and text to do this effectively. We will also develop ways of assessing when and where new data will be most valuable in improving the model outputs. This, when combined with constraints (such as land access or people's recording preferences) will be communicated to recorders as bespoke recommendations via a web app. This will be developed for recording butterflies and grasshoppers (a sunny day activity), and recording moths (supported by our provision of portable, low cost light traps). We will engage recorders through established recording projects across the UK, including with partners in London (many people, but relatively few biodiversity data) and North and East Yorkshire (fewer people, and a wide variety of land uses). Throughout this project our work flows will be implemented in an data lab, so they will be flexible for use with any species and indeed could be adapted for any environmental data. The outcome of this project will be a process for enhancing biodiversity information that can be incorporated into existing recording projects and data streams, so that the outputs will be accessible and useful, for the benefit of nature and people.

Future Earth is a major global research programme, which evolved from previous international programmes on human development, climate change, global environmental change and biodiversity. The integrated Land Ecosystem Atmosphere Process Study (iLEAPS) is a core project of Future Earth. As humans are now one of the strongest influences on climate and the environment, this second phase of iLEAPS (2014- 2024) is moving from research on natural pristine environments to investigating the interactions between natural and human environments. The project will also investigate the complex set of interactions that exist between the climate system, atmospheric composition/air quality, land use and land cover changes, socioeconomic development, and human decision-making. The research will provide information of relevance to the 8 key focal challenges identified by Future Earth in its 2014 Strategic Research Agenda: 1. Deliver water, energy and food for all. 2. Decarbonize socio-economic systems to stabilize the climate 3. Safeguard the terrestrial, freshwater and marine natural assets 4. Build healthy, resilient and productive cities 5. Promote sustainable rural futures to feed rising and more affluent populations 6. Improve human health through the improvement of human-environment interactions 7. Encourage sustainable and equitable consumption and production patterns 8. Increase social resilience to future threats iLEAPS acts as a communication hub and coordinator of world-wide scientific research in the field of ecosystem-atmosphere exchanges and the impact of those exchanges on the 8 societal challenges. iLEAPS promotes scientific excellence through developing international science initiatives that are multi-disciplinary, through bringing together the modelling community with satellite, experimental and field observational experts and through enabling communication and networking across the international science community. iLEAPS promotes leadership in science through capacity building in developing countries and support to young or Early Career scientists by hosting workshops, ensuring timely and relevant science to be available through their website and through training programmes. The NERC Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH) is taking over the iLEAPS International Project Office during 2016. CEH will undertake the activities below to enhance the impact of the iLEAPS project: 1 .IPO Operation and Co-ordination Activities * Work with the iLEAPS Scientific Steering Committee to deliver the iLEAPS Science Plan and Priority Research Topics * Maintain and enhance connections with relevant international projects, regional and national iLEAPS offices, providing advocacy and enlisting wide international participation * Promote capacity building through support of the Early Career Scientist network and supporting workshops and regional networks in the developing world * Work with Future Earth through national and international committees to deliver their vision * Secure additional funding to support these activities 2. Communication * Maintain and co-ordinate input to the iLEAPS website * Host, support and fund workshops and conferences 3. Science leadership * Start new, and maintain existing, Science Initiatives and Projects 4. Science Products * Generate integrated products for the world-wide community * Create new analysis tools for analysing data from experimental and field observations, satellites and computer models