The aim of the project is to identify opportunities and constraints of managing wetland buffer zones (WBZ) for cleaning nutrient-rich runoff water from agricultural systems, contributing to the protection of river ecosystems, bio-energy production and sustainable livelihoods. Circular economy is a systemic approach to production that avoids waste or pollution by re-using and recycling by-products. Most current agricultural production systems are large sources of nitrogen and phosphorous, which is leached to the environment and causes eutrophication of land and surface waters and thus rivers and seas. At the same time, conventional water management used in agricultural landscapes increases the problem of nutrient loss from land to aquatic systems due to enhanced surface outflow. Effective concepts for downstream water treatments are urgently needed. A sustainable solution are natural or constructed wetland buffer zones, which increase retention of nutrient-rich water by allowing wetland soil and vegetation to absorb and remove nutrients from surface and ground waters before they reach downstream rivers, lakes and the sea. As highly productive ecosystems, wetland buffer zones are also effective in sequestering atmospheric carbon. Applying ‘paludiculture’, i.e. the production of biomass under wetland conditions (typically in peatlands, here extended to riparian wetlands as well) offers to combine nutrient removal and recycling with carbon sequestration and biomass production. We assess the prospects to use vegetation biomass harvested in WBZ to produce agricultural and gardening substrates (compost), energy (combustion, biogas) or industrial raw materials. The nutrient recycling potential through biomass removal and re-use will be assessed, monetarised and its commodification will be explored. The added value of the proposed approach will be quantified, such as increased soil organic matter and improved water sorption, lower erosion susceptibility as effect of substituting synthetic fertiliser with compost or lowered GHG emission reduction by replacing fossil fuels with biomass produced in WBZ. We will also analyse societal and economic opportunities of creating WBZ by the assessment and evaluation of their multiple ecosystem services, including supporting (biodiversity) and cultural ones (recreation, angling, tourism, etc.). Lastly, we will assess the economic potential of the proposed approach in selected case-study areas by cost-benefit-analyses of establishing and maintenance of wetland buffer zones, economical valuation of ecosystem services related to them and to modelled scenarios at catchment scales and promote its implementation by involving and consulting stakeholders and policy-makers.

Humans have modified over 75% of the global land area, leading to huge, negative impacts on biodiversity. A major consequence is that once large natural habitats have become fragmented into small islands of habitat within a sea of human-modified land such as farms and cities. Most species depend on dispersal (the movement of individuals from where they are born to a different location) to maintain healthy populations across landscapes. When their habitat becomes fragmented into small, isolated patches, species are often unable to disperse effectively between the remnant patches and this frequently results in population declines, loss of genetic diversity and local extinctions of species. Understanding how best to manage landscapes that are fragmented is a key challenge. One of the most promising responses to fragmentation is to conserve or restore wildlife corridors, i.e. swaths of natural habitat between otherwise isolated habitat patches to facilitate dispersal, gene flow, and population rescue. Indeed, corridor creation is at the core of national (e.g. England's 25 Year Environment Plan) and international (e.g. the UN's Connectivity Conservation Project) environmental policies. Many conservation and environment agencies (e.g., Natural England, the USA's 22 Landscape Conservation Cooperatives) are designing - and public and private conservation investors are implementing - wildlife corridors. Huge sums of money in direct expenses and foregone development opportunities are being invested in corridors. However, we lack an understanding of if such corridors work. Most of what is known about corridor efficacy comes from experiments on model systems that do not resemble real-world wildlife corridors. New studies are needed to address the crucial questions: do corridors counter real-world fragmentation; and what corridor characteristics constrain effectiveness? To address these questions, we need to do fundamental research into the ecology of species' dispersal over large-scales and within complex, human-modified landscapes. Existing experiments on corridors study the effects of corridors less than 0.5km long and less than 0.4km wide, much smaller than corridors in the real world. Our objective in this project is assess corridor effectiveness in a number of human-modified landscapes. We will address major knowledge gaps about the characteristics of effective corridors by studying 4-6 focal species in each of 20 landscapes in Europe and the Americas. Each of these 20 landscapes contains three types of habitat configurations: isolated habitat patches, pairs of patches connected by a corridor, and a large intact natural area. The landscapes are ideal because they vary in corridor widths (0.2-3km) and lengths (1-25km), which resembles the large scales at which habitat fragmentation and corridors are design in reality. Using genetic methods to assess how a variety of mammal species move in these different habitat configurations, we will identify whether mammals are able to use corridors at these large scales and which corridor characteristics (e.g. length, width) most strongly influence success. We will assess where and how unsuccessful corridors fail. We will also use novel analysis of species characteristics, such as body size, dispersal ability, brain size and reproductive rate, to identify which types of species are most likely to benefit from corridors and determine whether different types of species might require different types of corridors. Finally, we will use our new data in ecological models to test a range of methods for planning wildlife corridors, which will make the project useful to conservation managers globally. Our project will deliver vital new information on how to make wildlife corridors successful for a large variety of species, will bring new understanding into species dispersal over very large scales, and will provide new methods for determining where to best invest resources for conservation.

Most agricultural products are derived from fruits of flowering plants, such as wheat, rice and corn. Since fruits originate from flowers, crop improvement requires a detailed understanding of flower and fruit development. Research on reference species, such as Antirrhinum or Arabidopsis, has revealed genes that control key steps in the development of flowers and fruits. These genes encode transcription factors, which regulate other genes that contain specific DNA sequences within their regulatory regions. It is believed that variation in these regulatory sequences and in their interaction with key transcription factors have played a major role in creating the changes in flower and fruit development seen during evolution and in plant domestication. We aim to understand how networks of transcription factors and their target regulatory sequences control flower and fruit development, how these networks vary between species, and explore these variations for practical use. We will focus on a key set of regulatory genes, originally identified in Arabidopsis. One of them is WUSCHEL (WUS), which controls the stem cell population that sustains development of all new plant organs. During floral organogenesis, WUS is repressed through the action of AGAMOUS (AG) and SEEDSTICK (STK). AG goes on to play a key role in specifying stamen and carpel identity, while STK guides ovule development. Under the control of AG, a further set of genes controls cell differentiation within the carpels, including the development of structures that in some species eventually allow the fruits to open and release seeds. This network includes SHATTERPROOF (SHP), FRUITFUL (FUL), JAGGED (JAG) and REPLUMLESS (RPL). We will initially use Arabidopsis to fill gaps in our knowledge of how these genes regulate each other and additional target genes during development. Each of the European partners in this project will focus on a subset of the genes mentioned above. In all cases, we will first identify the regulatory sequences that are targeted in vivo by the transcription factors encoded by these genes. We will then verify whether these target sequences are conserved across species and test their importance for the expression of the genes that contain them. We will then check whether variations in regulatory sequences can explain some of the developmental differences seen across species. In our case, we will check whether changes in the regulation of SHP, FUL, JAG and RPL are involved in the differences in fruit development between Arabidopsis and rapeseed. Based on the results, we will then perform a targeted screen for changes in regulatory sequences that may alter rapeseed fruit development for practical use, specifically, to reduce seed loss due to premature opening of the fruit.

Over 200 million children under the age of 5 years in low-resource settings are exposed to adverse environmental factors, such as inadequate nutrition, physical illness and a lack of stimulation. This can have consequences for their ability to achieve important developmental milestones and, as a result, for subsequent school performance. While this is recognised as an important issue, there is very little research that aims to identify the earliest signs of risk and how it shapes development. Identifying early signs of risk in infancy is crucial for developing interventions to help children achieve optimal outcomes. It is also important to better understanding how specific aspects of a child's environment, such as nutrition and caregiving practices, contribute to their development. With this work, we will be better able to understand how certain risk factors impact on development and also how to best promote enriching elements within the family and broader community that can offset the impact of risk. The aim of this research is to investigate the development of cognitive skills from infancy to preschool age among a group of children from a rural region of The Gambia, West Africa. The data for this project comes from the Brain Imaging for Global Health project (BRIGHT; globalfnirs.org), a study that has been following a group of children in The Gambia from the prenatal period to preschool age to measure their brain and cognitive development during early childhood. The specific aims of this study are to: (1) Examine cognitive development from infancy to preschool age among this group of children in the rural Gambian setting. Our goal is to study individual differences in development, which may help to identify children who show delayed development compared with the rest of the group. (2) Investigate whether the ability to regulate attention and respond to social input during infancy predicts cognitive development during preschool age. We will use assessments of behavioural and neural responses to measure these skills in infancy and explore how they relate to outcomes during preschool age. (3) To understand how both adverse and enriching elements of a child's environment contribute to their cognitive development. In particular we are interested in examining how exposure to adversity early in life impacts on development. The adverse factors that we will investigate are poverty, poorer physical growth and maternal mental health difficulties. We are also interested whether enriching factors, including maternal engagement and broader caregiver support, can promote healthy cognitive development and offset some of the impacts of risk. (4) In addition to our research aims, we will also engage members of the Gambian community (parents, healthcare professionals) to ask for their input in our work. Moreover, we will establish a network of researchers from African institutions and across the globe, who study early childhood development in Africa, to share our findings and form collaborations. Our work has the potential to have important impacts for research, as well as the development of interventions. Firstly, this study can help us better understand the general development of children in The Gambia. It can also help identify early signs and risk factors for developmental difficulties. Finally, our findings will help to identify and promote elements of the family and broader community that provide enrichment. With this work, we aim to make a lasting contribution to the research community and society in The Gambia and broader global health settings.