Cryptogams (mosses, lichens) are a conspicuous part of the ecology of alpine and higher-latitude ecosystems, and are important for cycling carbon and nutrients. In particular, how cryptogams take nitrogen from the atmosphere (N-fixation), could be of considerable importance in these systems, where nutrients are generally not easily accessible by plants and microbes. Our understanding on these processes is poor, especially in the alpine, and especially for times of the year outside of the main summer growing season. This is concerning given how climate change is disproportionally effecting higher latitude, higher elevation, ecosystems, and through changing snow-cover, affecting winter strongly. This also means that understanding the role cryptogams plays in global climate modelling is not well resolved, and in ecosystem where they are abundant, this is a shortcoming. Cryptogams also have a diverse microbial community inhabiting the aboveground parts. As part of a complex microbial food web, this includes photosynthesising organisms and microbes that can fix atmospheric nitrogen. Currently, we have little information on the molecular ecology of these communities, and if the structure and function of the microbe-cryptogam system varies over time, and amongst different cryptogams. To understand this, and how alpine cryptogams function over time and in response to changing energy and nutrient availability, we will study four different species of cryptogams in our fieldsite in the Cairngorms of eastern Scotland. In this sub-arctic alpine environment, we will measure how C and N are captured and cycled by cryptogams, measure for the first time how these processes occur under snow, and track the fate of C and N into soils. We will use shading methods to change how C enters to the system, allowing us to determine how cryptogams change their nutrient cycling under altered energy availability. Together, these investigations will help us better model how these ecosystems under a changing climate, and increase our understanding of the ecology of the cryptogamosphere.

It has been made clear by examples such as Ash Dieback, that our trees face a serious threat from new diseases and pests. As trees are everywhere and are well-loved parts of our landscape, an important part of our economy and an essential part of our biodiversity, their loss has serious consequences. However, dealing with each new threat as it comes along is difficult, expensive and potentially futile as threats can evolve so much faster than their tree hosts. Also, tree health is not just about a single pest or disease, but about growing trees in the right place, about keeping population sizes up, about ensuring seedlings get a chance to grow and about allowing forests to change as the environment changes. So, in order to find a sustainable long-term strategy for keeping our trees healthy, we need to consider the range of real and potential threats that trees face and try to deal with these together. At the same time, we need to ask what is possible for changing the way we grow trees: how do we use trees now, what do we want from our trees in the future, and how much change are we willing to accept? By finding a middle ground, that brings together the best biological knowledge with a clear understanding of the possible ways to adapt, we can give our trees the best possible chance of withstanding new threats. The most important part of finding a way to do this is bringing together many different groups of people, and different types of knowledge. A lot is known about many of our trees already, but usually this knowledge comes from unlinked, independent studies and rarely do results from one study tell us something about another, even for the same tree species. Much better coordination is needed. To show how this can be done, we aim to use the example of Scots pine, an important native tree species. For Scots pine, we know of several serious threats that are either here or are likely to reach the UK soon. The remaining native Scots pine forests are small and fragmented, but we know that they are adapted to their local environments: so pine trees from one part of the country grow differently than those from another. There are large plantations of Scots pine in many parts of the UK - there is ten times as much planted as remains in the native forests - and these are often at much higher densities than are found in nature, and often alongside plantations of pines from other parts of the world. There is also a strong cultural attachment to the species; in many places pinewoods are being replanted and it is often used as a garden or amenity tree. Our project aims to measure how variable and adaptable are the threats to Scots pine, to test how much variation there is in the tree species in resistance to these threats, and to find ways to get people involved in making healthier pine forests. By doing this we also aim to show how the same thing can be done for any other tree species, and to put in place the tools for getting it done. We will focus on three important threats to Scots pine - Dothistroma needle blight, the pinetree Lappet moth and pine pitch canker. We will bring together a group of scientists - specialists in ecology, tree genetics, forest pathology, plant biochemistry, fungal ecology and evolution and social science - who will work together on the same, carefully chosen pine trees. This work will tell us how much the UK Scots pine population varies and how much it can change from generation to generation; how populations of the threats grow and change; and what can be done to make the pine forests we have more resilient. We will bring in lessons from crop agriculture, where similar problems have been faced for generations, and adapt these for trees and forests, that have much longer lifespans. Finally, by talking to people who work with and use trees, and the general public, we will find ways to use this information to make things change on the ground.

Aonachadh (un-ach-A) is gaelic for coming together, for two faces of a mountain that meet to form a uniting ridge. Building on and expanding an existing network of over 280+ organisations, we will bring together a wide range of stakeholders interested in investable biodiversity uplift projects. We will develop methods for creating standardised, accessible, and verifiable data, metrics and tools for voluntary biodiversity markets, and co-create research questions and a programme of work that can lead to a common framework for data gathering and business models and community engagement methods acceptable to supply-side projects as well as demand side investors. Research activity will enable us to come together in workshops and working groups to collaboratively co-create research questions, and then share, discuss and learn from lessons emerging from biodiversity uplift pilot projects engaging with voluntary markets in Scotland. Our research network - of established and emerging projects, financiers and policy makers - will contribute to NERC's Nature Positive Future programme from the unique context of Scotland, which is experiencing unprecedented increases in land values alongside a land reform agenda that seeks to deliver benefits from biodiversity markets for local communities. Scotland's place-based approach to ecosystem market development provides a unique opportunity to understand interactions between biodiversity, finance and society and what this means for environmental and economic resilience. Recent and ongoing work from the core team, and established connections with UK stakeholders and channel partners Ecosystems Knowledge Network and the Green Finance Institute, means we can initiate a quick start for more results and impact.

The northeast region of Brazil is relatively dry compared to the rest of the country, with unusually irregular rainfall patterns and associated frequent droughts. The soils there tend to be relatively fertile and so, despite crop failures sometimes occurring in drier years, the area is reasonably densely populated with about 15% of Brazil's population living there; but under what are generally impoverished conditions. This has led to extreme land-use pressures on the natural vegetation and widespread degradation of remaining lands. As in other parts of the world with similar soils and climate, the natural vegetation of the area is a form of deciduous scrub, known locally as Caatinga. Probably because Caatinga typically lacks the complexity and grandeur of moist tropical forests, this vegetation type has been to a large extent neglected to date both in terms of conservation programmes and scientific enquiry. This neglect has serious consequences given the enormous destruction of the Caatinga, which exceeds that of the neighbouring biomes of Amazonia and the Cerrado. Because of their potential importance in future warmer and drier climates in Brazil, conservation of the plant species of the Caatinga, which are adapted to high temperatures and seasonally erratic rainfall, is vital. Designed as an integrated research program involving both Brazilian and UK researchers 'Nordeste' will attempt to redress this neglect: 1. Through the establishment of a permanent plot network similar to that existing in moist tropical forests, allowing measurements of Caatinga canopy structure and dynamics and both their short- and long-term responses to climate change to be evaluated for the first time. 2. With the aid of new DNA barcoding measurements designed to better quantify the biodiversity of the region. 3. Through a comprehensive analysis of the biogeochemistry of natural and disturbed ecosystems to develop an understanding of how nutrient cycling processes vary in response to variations in soils and climate and human activity 4. Via a series of detailed structural, physiological measurements across the wide range of different Caatinga sub-types found in the region. These will be made both above- and below-ground and in natural and degraded ecosystems of the region. A special emphasis will be placed on measurements designed to help us understand why it is that under certain circumstances it is that very high biomass stands of Caatinga occur despite the very low rainfall. 5. Glasshouse experiments comparing water stress responses of seedlings native to moist forest, savanna and caatinga will also be undertaken in order to try and understand what specific metabolic adaptions are involved in plant adaptions to frequent and/or erratic conditions of extreme soil water deficit. 6. Via an integrated modelling program to provide new parameterisations of surface fluxes for semi-aid ecosystems in general and to provide new insights into variations in woody plant shoot: root allocation patterns in response to variation in precipitation regime. To achieve these aims, the project has been designed as a series of six inter-related field-based workpackages, with a seventh workpackage focussed on modelling of species distributions, ecosystem fluxes and developing a mechanistic understanding of caatinga vegetation functional responses to both variations in climate and soil properties. Designed with a view to also producing a series of well-defined products to assist both policy makers and local communities to better manage this unique resource - for example, online guides to ecologically dominant and economically useful plants, the study will serve to provide a valuable first step towards a better understanding of Caatinga vegetation and its responses to anthropogenic and land-use change pressures.

Kew's gardens, collections and research offer extraordinary opportunities to artists. Informed by an analysis of selected arts collaborations at the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew since the 1960s, 'Future Ecologies of Art' is the first interdisciplinary project that explores Kew's potential to work with artists on diverse and inclusive storytelling about two specific issues: the climate crisis and social justice. Increasingly botanic gardens are turning to artists to create links between scientists, horticulturalists and the public in order to expand their narratives. The project traces these developments and proposes to take botanic gardens seriously as sites of experimental artistic research and engagement. It emphasises the power of artists to capture imaginations, advance alternative and interdisciplinary forms of knowledge-creation and inspire audiences. The project maps arts collaborations, their evaluations and learnings at Kew via interviews with artists, curators, archivists and scientists as well as through archival research. In this context, it asks how diversifying access to collections and centring artists from marginalised backgrounds can feed into future arts projects. Here it places particular emphasis on investigating - with artists and researchers at Kew - how the increasingly urgent themes of the climate crisis and social justice can be mediated by artistic practices and support Kew's mission to protect plants and fungi for the wellbeing of people and all future life on the planet. The project investigates how art can build bridges between disciplines and audiences in the context of the botanic garden to give visibility to the climate crisis and social justice. It is structured in three phases, (1) an initial phase of scouting interviews, strategy and literature analysis, (2) a research development phase including interviews with Kew staff and artists who have worked with a range of botanical organisations (3) a public outcomes phase which will see two teaching collaborations with UK universities (the MA Art and Ecology at Goldsmiths and the BA Fine Art at Chelsea College of Art), two workshops, two journal articles and a best practice report for Kew. Throughout each phase it is also informed by a placement with the Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh to explore its arts strategy, broken down into three one-month research stays. The project is situated in the interdisciplinary Plant Humanities and dialogues with museum and heritage studies, particularly a recent focus on diversity, equity and inclusion. It also responds to recent developments in contemporary art theory and art history, especially current turns to ecology and social justice in art practice and a cultural climate in art institutions where artists globally critically engage with plants. It takes seriously Kew's recent commitment to arts collaborations which was highlighted in Kew's Manifesto for Change (2021) aiming to bring together artists and scientists to explore storytelling; and in the current Science Strategy (2021) as a commitment to arts collaborations as societal bridges. The project is conceived around the following research question: Drawing from Kew's history of arts collaborations, how can present and future artistic collaborations support GLAM sector organisations to explore diverse storytelling around the themes of climate crisis and social justice? It is further structured around these guiding questions: - How have official collaborations between Kew and artists evolved and been evaluated since 1960? What have been avenues for informal collaborations? - How can Kew encourage artists from marginalised backgrounds to work with collections? - How can art collaborations strengthen Kew's mission and advance interdisciplinary forms of knowledge-creation? - What roles can artists take in botanical research organisations to interpret collections for different audiences, and how can these translate to teaching materials?