By 2050 it is estimated that the global population will exceed 9 billion. This is expected to result in a 100% increase in demand for food. The world needs more high-quality protein, produced in a responsible manner. This challenge is addressed by UN Sustainable Development Goals SDG2 (Zero hunger) and SDG12 (Responsible Consumption and Production). Expansion of marine fish aquaculture has been highlighted as a key route to increase food production. It is also an important area for the blue economy with high potential for new jobs and revenue. In the UK, marine aquaculture is worth over £2 billion to the economy, supports 2300 jobs and has ambitions to double production by 2030. But climate change is a threat as fish production is highly sensitive to the environment. Climate change assessments are often only available for large areas, e.g. global or regional, and do not capture the local conditions that influence fish production. They focus on long-term decadal averages which miss the daily environmental variability and multiple stressors that fish experience. Impacts on growth, health and welfare of the farmed fish are determined by these environment-biological complexities at farm level, and are also influenced by production strategies and industry decisions which may be based on social or economic factors. Robust, industry-relevant, climate impact assessment must include the complexities, relationships and trade-offs between different natural processes and human interventions. Thus, a more comprehensive approach which uses systems thinking to capture the interlinking interdisciplinary components is urgently needed. Precision aquaculture, where vast amounts of data are collected and analysed, offers a framework to provide the detail required to understand the complex farm system, evaluate how the environment is changing and assess implications for future production. In this FLF, I will deliver a rigorous scientific framework for assessing impact of climate change on marine aquaculture using systems thinking and precision-based information. I will create an approach which integrates detailed knowledge of what is happening in the complex farm system now, with future projections of climate change and potential stakeholder response. This will involve collecting high resolution data, analysing complex datasets, developing farm-level models, simulating future climate scenarios, and determining the adaptive capacity of the sector. I will work closely with my network of key industry partners, research organisations, regulators and policy makers to maximise translation and transfer of knowledge and approaches to industry and associated stakeholders. Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) aquaculture in the Northeast Atlantic (Scotland and Norway) is used as a case study. Salmon leads marine fish production, with over 2 million tonnes produced each year, the equivalent of 17.5 billion meals. Norway and Scotland are responsible for 60% of production. The latitudinal range of farms extends across the thermal tolerance of the salmon, from temperate conditions in Scotland and south Norway, to arctic conditions in the north of Norway. This allows assessment of the spatio-temporal heterogeneity of climate change and a thorough analysis of how impact may vary between locations and different responses required. Beyond aquaculture, the positioning of marine fish farms offers an exceptional opportunity to gain deeper insight into the rate, magnitude and variability of climate change in coastal areas. This FLF will deliver vital new knowledge, data and approaches to understand how the environment is changing. This research is highly interdisciplinary, covering aspects of climate, environmental, biological and social science. The innovative techniques and transformative approaches will allow aquaculture to respond to the climate emergency, enhance blue economy opportunities and maximise its contribution to global food security.

The impacts of climate change are being felt by human populations everywhere. The Humboldt Current System (HCS) of the south east Pacific Ocean is one of the most complex and productive upwelling systems in the world, which supports large fisheries on which the people of the region depend. It is heavily influenced by the cycles of El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and recent evidence shows that the coastal upwelling dynamics are changing, potentially forced by global warming. This has cascading impacts on the coastal ecosystems, threatening the world's largest fishery, and negatively affecting oceanic and terrestrial biodiversity and the food security and livelihoods of resident populations. Predicting how ENSO patterns will alter the HCS as climate changes, is one of the biggest challenges in climate science today. To model future climate scenarios, it is important to understand how the regional climate has changed in the past in response to previous global warming. To do so, we use the shells of microscopic marine planktonic organisms called foraminifera (forams). Each foram species lives in a particular habitat and can be identified by its characteristic shell shape. The composition of this shell is a "proxy" for environmental conditions because it reflects the water column conditions (e.g. temperature) in which it was made. After reproduction and death, the shells sink to the seafloor, and accumulate in the sediments generating fossil records dating back millions of years. By taking sediment cores from the seafloor in the HCS, we can use the foram species assemblage and the shell composition "proxy" to reconstruct oceanic and climatic conditions in the past. In this way the foram fossil record represents the foundation stone of palaeoceanography, providing an unparalleled long-term dataset with which to test and improve models for climate change projections. The use of forams as a palaeoceanographic tool, however, needs to be filtered through a lens of biological understanding. The differing biology of foram species influences shell composition, leading to the routine use of species-specific proxies by palaeoceanographers. However, more recent research has shown that many species have evolved into genetically distinct groups called genotypes, driven by exploitable diverse niches in the water column. We now know that genotypes may look alike and contribute to the same fossil record. Yet, they occupy different niches, interact with different organism and/or are separated seasonally, all of which influence shell composition and lead to a requirement for genotype-specific proxies. Grouped as a single species in the fossil record, these genotypes supply an average temperature for the region, which is useful for understanding past climate over long time scales. However, analysing each genotype independently, or indeed analysing single specimens to understand changes in seasonal patterns through time allows for a much more refined understanding of changing oceanographic and climate patterns. This of course requires knowledge of the genotypes present and their biological preferences, both of which are currently unknown in the HCS, as it is the last remaining globally important oceanographic region to be genetically assessed. The overarching aim of this pilot project is to complete the global jigsaw and establish the foraminiferal genotypes present in the upwelling and OMZ waters of the HCS. We will then use our developed molecular approach to link these genotypes to their unique biology. We will combine this molecular data with genotype-specific measurements of shell composition to develop genotype-specific proxies. These methods will be directly applicable for research in other ocean regions and will provide palaeoceanographers with the most accurate tools to reconstruct past oceanic conditions, and climate modellers with finely tuned seasonal datasets for ground truthing of climate models.

Calbuco is a 2015m high, glacier capped, stratovolcano in the heavily populated Los Lagos district of southern Chile (41 degrees 19'48"S 72 degrees 37'06"W) with a history of very large volcanic eruptions in 1893-95, 1906-7, 1911-12, 1917, 1932, 1945, 1961 and 1972. On 22 April, 2015 Calbuco experienced a powerful 90 minute eruption at 18:04h followed by additional major eruptions at 01:00h and 13:10h on 23 & 30 April, respectively, resulting in the evacuation of 6500 people and the imposition of a 20 km radius exclusion zone. These eruptions generated ash plumes up to 15 km high, causing widespread disruption and damage to property to the NE of Calbuco. Hot pyroclastic flows (glowing avalanches) descended into several river catchments radiating from the volcano transforming into hot floods of water and sediment known as lahars which travelled distances of up to 14 km, reaching surrounding populated areas resulting in extensive damage to infrastructure and property. Although Calbuco, along with other nearby glaciated volcanoes in the Andes, has experienced recent reductions in the size of its glaciers, the current eruption indicates that even volcanoes with small glacier ice volumes can generate significant lahars. Our scientific goal is to determine the causes, dynamics and impacts of lahars generated during the ongoing Calbuco eruption. To achieve our goals we will undertake fieldwork on the volcano as soon as is practically possible. In the field we'll catalogue the immediate geomorphic and sedimentary impact of lahars on the river valleys systems surrounding Calbuco. We'll Identify lahar wash marks and will survey these use differential satellite positioning systems and ground based laser scanning. We'll conduct a helicopter based laser scanning survey of the lahar channels and will also use an airborne Radar to determine the presence and thickness of any ice left on the mountain after these eruptions. We'll sample and describe the vertical characteristics of these fresh lahar deposits in detail. The Calbuco eruption provides an exceptional opportunity to examine the dynamics and sedimentary signature of rare hot lahars, as they are still cooling and degassing. We plan to conduct fieldwork as soon as possible before the onset of subsequent volcanic and rainfall-induced lahars which may mask the signature of these earlier events. Our research will contribute to a better understanding of hazardous lahar processes with the hope of reducing the risk to population.