Open-air rock art panels are an iconic component of the UK's prehistoric heritage. Over 3500 rock art panels still exist across the UK from the Neolithic and Early Bronze Age periods, between 6000 and 3800 years ago. However, this art is non-renewable and there is growing evidence that the rate of panel deterioration is increasing in association with environmental change. As such, management interventions are urgently needed, but the underpinning science essential to guide approaches and decisions is still quite limited, especially for identifying panels at greatest risk and developing holistic strategies to sustain rock art survival into the future. With this background, we performed various scientific investigations over the past three years on the environmental and mineralogical basis of rock art deterioration in Northumberland to identify factors most associated with panel deterioration. This highly successful work showed that panel condition was strongly correlated to local soil salinity and the height of each panel, and also showed that panel deterioration was a non-linear process over time. Therefore, we have a growing understanding of the scientific basis of deterioration. However, this early work employed a condition assessment method that was excellent for research, but did not consider the uniqueness of panel attributes for prioritising panel care nor was it fully usable by non-specialists without assistance; both traits we feel are essential for widespread implementation. This project will rectify these initial shortcomings by co-producing a user-friendly condition assessment, risk evaluation (CARE) toolkit and how-to-guide. The proposed work fits perfectly into the AHRC's innovative "Care for the Future" theme as it provides us with an opportunity to expand our successful scientific research, but then uses an arts and humanities approach to translate our "science" into a more workable human tool for protecting rock art. We first will use a participatory/co-production approach with heritage managers, end-users (e.g., land managers/owners and volunteers) to define required CARE outcomes. New environmental data then will be obtained for rock art new locations in Northumberland, the Republic of Ireland and Scotland to further calibrate and validate the CARE tool. In parallel, focus groups and pilots in Northumberland will be used to co-produce outcomes amenable to non-specialists. Ultimately, we will generate a scientifically-grounded, user-friendly toolkit, which includes a "how-to-guide" for field use that will assist end-users in making decisions on panel care without specialist expertise. In essence, we will create an "early warning" system for use by non-specialists, which will aid heritage managers in their safeguarding of rock art. The project employs cross-disciplinary scholarship (i.e., environmental science, management, and resource expertise) and co-production with local communities and end-users. The work endeavours to make the core science behind our recommendations easily understood and publicly available via a range of dissemination routes, and to contribute to the growing ethos of Open Science reflected in the cultural/heritage sector and the natural and physical sciences. Our project specifically builds on two AHRC/EPSRC-funded Heritage and Science Cluster themes, "Decay of ancient stone monuments" and "Transformation and resilience of our landscapes, archaeology and built heritage: defining responses to societal and environmental pressures". Both Clusters assessed the role of environmental resilience on stone monument protection, which we now combine in our efforts to further develop the CARE outcomes. The project involves academics from Newcastle University, Queen's University, Belfast, and University of West Scotland with Project Partners from English Heritage, Northumberland County Council, and Northumberland National Park. All activities will be guided by a Steering Committee.

We have found that soils in cities are more effective sinks for carbon than agricultural soils. Urban soils typically carry a burden of fine-grained materials derived from often a long history of demolition. These materials include cement dust, which contains calcium silicate minerals, and also lime (calcium hydroxide). What we have found is that calcium derived from these minerals combines rapidly with carbonate in solution, which ultimately is derived from two sources - plants or rainwater. The rate at which this process occurs is extremely rapid, typically 100 T CO2 are removed from the atmosphere for each hectare of ground monthly; that's in a patch of ground the size of a football pitch. The amounts of carbon stored in urban soils as a consequence of this process are around 300 T C per hectare (compared with 175 T C per hectare in agricultural soils), and this is achieved rapidly after demolition (within very few years). We want to make sure that construction activity takes advantage of these findings, to help compensate for the CO2 emissions that arise from burning fossil fuels, and to contribute to the UK's ambitious targets for reducing our emissions. The potential is there - if engineered soils are strategically and systematically designed to have a carbon capture function we believe that around 10% of the UK's 2011 CO2 emissions could be captured in this way, as part of normal construction activity. The costs involved are far less than energy and capital intensive CO2 scrubbing systems that are fixed to specific plant, such as a power station. What's more, the design involves a range of ecosystem services and involves broadening the concept of 'Carbon Capture Gardens', which we have found to be very acceptable among a wide range of stakeholders, as pleasant spaces are created that communities can enjoy and engage with. The proposed research is intended to address some significant questions: 1) Can we reproduce the soil carbonation process artificially, so we can be sure of the carbon capture value? 2) How can we validate the process, so that claims of carbon sequestration can be trusted? 3) Is the process genuinely worth doing, in the context of UK and global CO2 emissions reduction targets? 4) What effect does the process have on soils, especially their strength and ability to drain rainwater, thus preventing flooding? 5) What effect does this approach have on plant and animal communities? Will the plants that we want grow in ground that has been treated to optimize carbon capture? 6) How does this process fit in with existing regulations that affect brownfield sites? 7) Under what circumstances is the process economically viable, given the geographical controls on availability of materials? 8) Can individuals use this approach in their own gardens? During the project, we will work with a wide range of stakeholders, from industry, local authorities and environmental groups as well as academics. We will engage students in monitoring work as part of the dissemination process. All the work will be openly published in appropriate forms, and we expect to build a growing community network associated with the project.

UK nature-based solutions, such as tree planting, must engage with the agricultural sector, given that agriculture uses more than 70 per cent of the land in the UK and is a major emitter of greenhouse gases (GHGs). Meeting the UK's tree planting targets and reducing agricultural GHG emissions may require converting current agricultural land to alternative land-uses. Agroforestry, where trees are deliberately combined with agriculture on the same piece of land, is one alternative land-use that maintains food production, but which can also drive down GHG emissions, deliver key ecosystem services, and create and improve (rural) livelihoods. Agroforestry supports several goals not only relevant to Net Zero, but for the UK government's 25 Year Environment Plan and Clean Growth Strategy. However, the environmental and societal benefits of agroforestry can only be realized through widespread adoption by key stakeholders, including farmers and land managers. The overall objective of the AF Futures project is to co-develop strategies to overcome barriers to, identify facilitators of, and increase opportunities for agroforestry practices in different UK contexts. Research focused on understanding the similarities in preferences and perceived challenges identified by different stakeholder groups, as well as how these might be addressed in local and national contexts will be conducted with AF futures, using a multidisciplinary approach. Integration of the natural, social and economic, sciences and arts and humanities is central to activities within AF Futures. Research addressing how regulatory structures, economic incentives, socio-economic drivers and impacts, and agronomic intervention shape agroforestry practices will be integrated through different disciplinary lenses. The arts and humanities will be used to create visual transitions from past representations of agroforestry to agroforestry futures, which integrate socio- economic outcomes and future biodiversity and ecosystem services, if adoption of different particular agroforestry approaches occurs.

Our Vision is for climate resilient, net zero development of the transport system to be guided by systems analysis. When this vision is realised, decision-makers will have access to (and visualisation of) data that tells them how transport is performing against resilience, decarbonisation, and other objectives, now and in the future. We will deliver them systems models that will help to pinpoint vulnerabilities and quantify the risks of failure. This will enable them to perform 'what-if' analysis of proposed investments and to stress-test scenarios for the major uncertainties that will determine the performance of future transport systems, such as population growth, new materials and technologies and climate change. Our ambition is to deliver co-created research that plots viable pathways and solutions for delivering a resilient, net-zero transport system that works for people and communities by 2050. DARe will be the go-to Hub because we will engage widely and proactively, and provide the evidence, guidance and tools to decision-makers that will enable them to prioritise early interventions and investments. . Our research programme will take a system-of-systems led approach to transport which recognises and addresses the challenges at the three, distinct but critically interlinked, scales of national, regional and local. It will address the interwoven challenges of resilience and net zero, for both existing and new transport infrastructures, and identify and provide solutions for new vulnerabilities that may occur because of the net zero transition, including critical interdependencies with digital and power infrastructures. It will demonstrate the benefits and opportunities that come from reimagining and rethinking how our transport systems deliver mobility to both people and the goods and services our economy relies on, and will offer insight on how governance and policy can enable and drive these changes. We have shaped our research programme in consultation with our multiple civic partners in North East and North West England, Northumberland, Cambridgeshire & Heartland and Scotland as well as our strong cohort of additional partners. DARe will build on this by opening the partnership to all and proactively engage in a programme of co-creation events during the first nine months to jointly define scenarios and storylines leading us towards addressing the dual challenge of decarbonising our local regional and national transport infrastructures whilst increasing their resilience and adaptability in a context of climate change. The role and participation of the wider research community via the DARe Flexible Fund will be instrumental in delivering this. The DARe work programme comprises five integrated work packages (WPs), four focussed research activities plus a management WP. WP1 delivers the co-created transport futures storylines which shape the research activities of the hub and develops the storylines to stress-test solutions across the three spatial scales, contextualised by the systems-of-systems interactions between transport-power-digital critical infrastructures. WP2 provides a new, transferable open-source modelling framework that will be co-developed with and made available to the wider community as a legacy of DARe. WP3 will address the physical implications for infrastructure assets and how their climate-perturbed performance will impact whole-life management. WP4 will provide insights into the wider implications and real-world impacts of the storylines when considering the policy, socio-economic, behavioural and land use planning aspects of the hub. WP0 will be dedicated to hub management, governance and engagement.

The ESPRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Renewable Energy Northeast Universities Plus (ReNU+) is a transformative programme that will train a new generation of Doctoral Carbon Champions (DCCs) who are characterised by scientific and engineering excellence and capable of interdisciplinary systemic thinking to accelerate Net Zero. The outcome from ReNU+ will be that DCCs will meet critical needs in high-skill employment across industry, policy, education and government and convert key challenges in resilience and equity into economic opportunities for the United Kingdom. This will be achieved through a professionally accredited training programme in a thriving environment of research excellence led by Northumbria, Newcastle and Durham universities. The 2023-2035 energy landscape sets a compelling context for ReNU+ and in particular, the need for future leaders in this space in the United Kingdom. Locally generated renewable energy will provide the UK with increased energy security and critically important additions in electricity capacity to meet domestic and industrial demands. This is only one piece of the landscape however, which also includes sustainability (e.g. critical materials supply), resilience (e.g. climate change mitigation) and an equitable transition to Net Zero, which offers both economic and health benefits. The absorptive capacity for ReNU+ DCCs is partly evidenced by the forecast of 694,000 new UK jobs in the low carbon and renewable energy economy by 2030 (source: UK Local Government Association). The ReNU+ training programme has a core focus on developing key skills that facilitate understanding of and engagement with the wider Net Zero system including investment, regulation and end-user engagement. It will become a reference for high-skill training in Net Zero that redefines the role of scientists and engineers as critical catalysts for decarbonisation who deliver impact well beyond technology. ReNU+ identifies a critical link between equality, diversity and inclusivity and decarbonisation and includes key innovations to leverage this link. Consequently, DCCs will also develop societal and citizenship values as they become living examples of the future workforces to enable an equitable and sustainable transition to Net Zero. This approach has been validated by our partners who have co-designed and will co-deliver the ReNU+ training programme. This support includes national and local Government, multinational companies, small-to-medium enterprises and charity organisations.