'Citizen science', or the participation of 'non-specialists' in the gathering or analysis of scientific data, is playing an increasingly important role in scientific research. It is an excellent way for citizens to contribute to the forecasting and warning of hazards that impact them and could be particularly helpful in low and middle income countries. in these regions, citizen science also has the potential to generate shared understandings of hazardous phenomena, improve communication and help communities at risk take actions to improve their resilience during and after hazardous events. From earlier volcano-related research projects we have evidence that working with communities at risk to gather data and make observations of natural phenomena does help them reduce their risk. It also helps both scientists and community members cope with the uncertainty around hazardous phenomena by helping them to devise strategies that minimise impacts on lives and livelihoods. Researchers working on other hazards have also found this to be the case. There are many challenges in moving from the theory regarding the usefulness of citizen science to the practice of making a project work. What we want to do is (A) understand how we should use 'citizen science' to address these challenges and build resilience to environmental hazards (B) create and nurture an international transdisciplinary community of practice to contribute to future projects (B). We will involve addressing the following objectives: (1) learn lessons and synthesise knowledge from previous citizen science programs and existing initiatives; (2) understand what the barriers to success are with these types of project and try to break them down. We think this means we will have to widen our thinking about citizen science techniques, in new ways. We will incorporate methodologies and techniques from the humanities and we include important lessons from the theory and best practices in international development. We will try to address tensions between 'bottom-up' or community driven practices and 'top-down' or technocratic approaches to gathering data. We will also meet these aims and objectives by using a case study-based approach to frame our thinking about how this will work best for the citizens at risk from environmental hazards. Citizens are at the heart of this project and so we will use conversations with communities in three contrasting study sites (Ecuador, the English-speaking Caribbean and Nepal) to inform our synthesis and critical analysis of the challenges encountered in country. To achieve these aims we have brought together a group of researchers across all relevant fields, and will use our research to create a new community of practice. Each investigator will act as a 'champion' for their specialism to quickly draw together a grouping of experts to attend an initial workshop and we will use the discussion there to inform a synthesis of relevant initiatives and existing evidence. That synthesis will be used to critically reflect on the barriers to success. During this, we will address the tensions between participatory approaches to development focussed on the communities and their empowerment and engagement and more traditional scientific methods driven by the need for knowledge and data coming from the scientists. We will also work to understand the contribution that narratives and narrative analysis bring to the overall goals of 'citizen science' initiatives, and how they might help to equalise relationships within a project. We'll produce an analysis of what might help projects in the future successfully use citizen science to empower communities to deal with natural hazards. We will also increase everyone's knowledge of this field. We will share this analysis with the communities where we work and have designed our case studies to be used by initiatives already in place to increase community resilience in those regions.

New World primates live in the tropical regions of Central and South America, and include such well-known and charismatic species as spider monkeys, howler monkeys, marmosets and capuchins. Today, there are more than 170 species known in five families, which collectively exhibit a broad range of different body sizes, diets and activity. Remarkably, all this diversity originated from a single common ancestor that reached South America from Africa 35-45 million years ago, probably by being transported over sea on a raft of vegetation. Why and how did this ancestor give rise to all the varied species that make up modern New World primate radiation? What were the drivers leading to the diversification of the different families? Were abiotic factors like changes in climate, the uplift of the Andes mountains, and the development of the Amazon river, or were biotic factors (competition with other mammals) more important in driving diversification? Can we identify when and why there were changes in body size, diet and activity pattern in different New World primate groups? Our proposed project will attempt to answer these questions. To do so, we will combine two very different, but complementary, types of data: genomic data, which provides detailed information on living species, and fossil data, which provides (often very incomplete) information on past diversity. Previous studies have usually used either genomic data or fossil data, but ours will combine the two, to take advantage of their different strengths and to compensate for each other's weaknesses. Firstly, we will examine the genomes of different New World primate species to see if we can identify genes relating to traits like diet, body size and activity pattern. By doing so, we will be able to infer how these traits have changed through time in the different New World primate groups. Secondly we will produce a new evolutionary tree (phylogeny) of all the living New World primate species, using large amounts of genomic data and sophisticated methods to produce the most complete and accurate phylogeny of the group, and we will use "molecular clocks" to infer divergence times for when different lineages split from one another. With our new phylogeny and divergence times, we will examine how the rate of diversification has varied through time, and whether very high or low rates of diversification coincide with periods of environmental change. We will also identify previously unrecognised species and reassess the taxonomy of all known species. This information will be key to conservation efforts, by helping identify the species most in need of protection to conserve maximum biodiversity. Thirdly, we will use data from the fossil record to model how living and extinct lineages of New World primates have diversified through time. This data can be compared with the pattern of diversification indicated by the phylogeny of living New World primates, to see if they are broadly similar. If they show major differences, this suggests that extinction has played a key role in New World primate evolution. We will also use the fossil record to test the hypothesis that New World primates outcompeted superficially "primate-like" mammals (actually, relatives of modern marsupials) that were already present in South America when the New World primate ancestor arrived from Africa. Our project will massively increase our understanding of New World primate evolution, shed new light on diversification and evolutionary processes in general, and help identify those New World primates most vulnerable to extinction. In doing so our findings will be of interest to a wide range of scientists, including evolutionary biologists, genomicists, ecologists and palaeontologists. Because our project, by rigorously clarifying NWP species numbers and boundaries, our results will also have broader practical utility for conservation practitioners and policy makers in governmental and non-governmental agencies.

STREVA will bring together researchers from universities, research institutes and volcano observatories, to explore methods for reducing the negative consequences of volcanic activity on communities. We will work both with communities facing volcanic threats and with those responsible for monitoring, preparing for and responding to those threats. Our main partners are volcano monitoring agencies and observatories in Colombia, the Caribbean and Ecuador, and through them, disaster managers and disaster researchers throughout the region, as well as residents of communities at risk. We will use a number of techniques to build links between the project and the wider community, including workshops, running scenario exercises, and using social media to report our results. Our aim, by working collaboratively across different disciplines, is to develop and apply a risk assessment framework that will generate better plans to reduce the negative consequences of volcanic activity on people and assets. Volcanic risk is a complex problem, which we shall understand by investigating a number of volcanoes, at-risk communities, emergencies and policy responses across the region. These case studies will help us to identify common issues in volcanic disaster risk and ultimately develop regional risk assessment processes. These will be crucial for long-term planning to reduce exposure to volcanic hazards. The countries in which we will work are all middle income and face multiple volcanic threats, often in close proximity to large towns and cities. The main focus will be on six volcanic sites across the Lesser Antilles, Ecuador and Colombia. We will begin the project by reviewing the secondary literature on three well monitored and active volcanoes, to analyse what has already been done to understand and reduce risk to the surrounding population. Through in-depth empirical research in these volcanic areas we shall begin to develop, test and apply our new risk assessment framework and methods for application. We will then take these lessons and apply them to three high-risk volcanoes where monitoring and understanding is less advanced. STREVA's work will generate improvements in: (i) methods for forecasting the start of eruptions and changes in activity during eruption; (ii) prediction of areas at-risk (the "footprint") from different volcanic hazards; (iii) understanding of the factors that make people and their assets more vulnerable to volcanic threats; (iv) understanding of institutional constraints and capacities and how to improve incentives for risk reduction By the end of the project, our new knowledge will help us to measure volcanic risk more accurately and monitor how that risk is changing. The practical results will be a strengthening in the capacity of stakeholders at different scales (staff in volcano observatories, local and national governments and NGOs) to produce risk assessments for high-risk volcanoes and use them to improve preparedness and response to volcanic emergencies and build resilience in the surrounding communities through long-term planning. In adopting this approach, STREVA will have real impacts in real places, and will significantly advance the fields of volcanic risk analysis and disaster risk reduction.