Forests are a critical component of the global carbon cycle because they take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere through photosynthesis, and store the carbon in wood and soil. All living things in forests also produce carbon dioxide through respiration as an inevitable consequence of sustaining themselves and growing. At present, forests take in more carbon dioxide than they release, helping to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide present in the atmosphere, but this 'free gift' from forests is not guaranteed to continue at its current rate indefinitely under climate change. As well as the carbon cycle, forests are also crucial in the water cycle as trees pump water from the soil into the atmosphere. Leaves are the key part of the plant that regulates the exchange of gases (water, carbon dioxide) with the atmosphere. The pores in the leaf surface (stomata) are important for water loss and temperature control as well as the entry of carbon dioxide. Leaves exposed to direct sunlight can be more than ten degrees hotter than the air, even in temperate latitudes. Leaf temperature is important because many biological processes, including photosynthesis and respiration, are sensitive to temperature; very high temperatures can cause immediate and acute damage to leaves. Over the coming century, we expect carbon dioxide concentrations and air temperatures to continue to rise. When trees are grown in higher carbon dioxide concentrations, stomata close and limit water loss; this prevents the plant dehydrating but also reduces how much leaves can cool down. However, there is limited monitoring on forest canopy temperatures, and limiting understanding on how different species and forests in different climate zones are responding to climate change. This project will build a global network of researchers working to measure forest canopy temperatures using thermal infrared cameras, which will provide both greater understanding and also a crucial data resource for scientists in other disciplines to utilise. The network will ensure that the data collected by separate groups are comparable, and aid data processing and analysis by providing clear guidance and tools. This is will encourage other researchers to take up use of thermal infrared cameras, the analysis of which can be challenging. Our network will monitor canopy temperatures at fourteen sites in tropical and temperate forests and savannah, in UK, China, India, Australia, Brazil, Peru, Panama, USA, and Ghana. The sites in the UK and Peru will be newly established by this project. Ten sites already have established data collection, while the final two sites (Australia, Ghana) are in development. Having data collected using cameras will allow us to understand not only how forests in different locations are behaving, but also whether and how different species within sites respond. The long-term nature of the project means that seasonal variation will be included, and the forest response to extreme events such as heat waves and droughts will be quantified. Future work will establish in more detail how changes to canopy temperature link to changes in forest carbon and water cycling. Our work providing insight into the response of forest canopies to climate change will inform models produced to assess the impacts of greenhouse gas emissions on the planet, which are used to inform global climate change policies. Further, the current global emphasis on mitigating climate change through tree planting makes it crucial to assess how these trees will cope under future conditions.

Life on land depends upon freshwater. Mountains act as water towers, producing water by lifting moist air, and by providing temporary surface and below-ground storage of water for later release into rivers. These stores are particularly important in regions that experience seasonal droughts, as snow and ice melt can counteract reduced rainfall during dry spells. Two main natural depots of frozen water exist. Snow is a short-term store, delaying the release of water after snowfall on daily to seasonal timescales. Ice melt also releases water seasonally. However, glacier ice is a longer-term reservoir, storing water for decades to centuries. A similar behaviour can be observed in the non-frozen part of a mountain catchment. Stores such as wetlands, ponds and shallow below-ground flow provide short-term storage, while lakes and deeper groundwater show long-term release characteristics. The combination of these different processes determines the magnitude and behaviour of a mountain range's water tower function for the surrounding area. This is particularly important in the Andes, where some of the most important water towers of the globe are found. The human population in regions neighbouring the Andes depend on mountain water resources for drinking, food production and hydropower, as do animals and plant life. Unfortunately, human-induced climate change is altering the stores of water held in the Andes water towers. Greenhouse gas emissions mean that snow-bearing weather conditions are becoming less frequent, depleting the stocks of snow held in the mountains. The lack of replenishing snow, and increasing temperatures, are causing glaciers to lose the ice they store, retreating to the higher and colder portions of the mountains. In combination with climate change impacts on the rest of the catchment, this is contributing to water shortages across the Andes. Ongoing droughts are hitting high-population cities, where the concentration of people increases the demand for water. For example, the cities of Lima and Huaraz (Peru), La Paz (Bolivia) and Santiago (Chile), are all situated in catchments where snow and ice melt contribute to river flow. However, upstream rural areas, which are less adaptable to climate change, are often even more directly reliant upon snow and ice meltwater. This impacts irrigation for agriculture, stressing the food security of the region. To help manage these changes to water supplies, this project aims to achieve two things. The first is to provide better monitoring. The high altitudes of the Andes are poorly instrumented. To work out where and how fast conditions are changing, we will install more scientific instruments to measure snow, weather and river discharge. To contextualise the changes we can measure now, we need longer observational records extending back in time. Many glaciers have been retreating since 1850, leaving behind an imprint in the landscape which we will map. Using satellite imagery, we can track the retreat of these glaciers from the 1970s to their present position. We will also utilise records of past climate conditions, recorded by sailors in ships-log books and stored in the landscape in sediments. Our second goal is to project future changes, which requires computer models of climate, glacier and river processes. Such projections are required for policy makers, who need to be reliably informed of potential future change. We will combine state-of-the-art models, to simulate the changing water resources in ten Andean catchments. To assess the skill of our models at making predictions, we will test them against our observations of past conditions and current changes. Models that perform well at replicating observed conditions will be used to project a range of possible future climate scenarios. By combining these observational and model-based approaches, we will improve the approach to projecting water resource change, and help to inform water management plans.

Urban equality refers to the possibility of attaining an even distribution of access to resources, services and opportunities, as well as recognition of social diversity and inclusion in decisions that affects urban citizens' lives. Increasing rates of urban inequality since the 1990s affect directly prosperity and resilience outcomes in urban areas. Increasing rates of urban inequality hold back economic, social and political progress and can contribute to conflicts and extreme poverty. In the age of urbanisation, with more than half of the World's population living in urban areas, achieving urban equality is a major global challenge. Three quarters of the World's urban areas are more unequal today than they were 20 years ago. Close to 1 billion people worldwide live in informal settlements, deprived of basic services and livelihood opportunities. The challenge of urban inequality has inspired a new global discourse on the future of cities and urban areas. The Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 11, the 'urban' goal, emphasise the need to deliver inclusive cities. The New Urban Agenda (NUA) adopted by national governments in Quito, October 2016, asks for urban policies for a city that leave 'no one behind'. The project 'Knowledge in Action for Urban Equality' (henceforth KNOW) seeks to develop research capacities in developing countries and in UK institutions that deliver ODA research, to deliver on the SDG11 and the NUA. KNOW focuses on the major knowledge gap in global policy agendas: delivering urban equality for inclusive cities of opportunities for all. The work programme focuses on three key challenges: achieving prosperity; building resilience to disasters and a changing climate; and addressing the persistent problem of extreme poverty. The work programme is divided in six work packages. Three work packages focus on learning-by-doing, that is, doing research as a means to build capacity. Work Package 1 will deliver city-relevant research in several countries including Perú, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Tanzania, Uganda, Sierra Leona, India, and Sri Lanka. In each case, KNOW will support the formation of a network of overseas and local academics, and stakeholders who will work together to identify the specific challenges associated with urban inequality that emerge in each city. Work Package 2 will use different case-based experiences to develop a comparative programme of research across cities, exploring the challenges of prosperity, resilience, and extreme poverty. Work Package 3 will focus on develop an 'Ethics of Practice' for urban research, within the framework of the Global Challenges Research Fund. Three work packages will focus on delivering capacities to maximise the impact of research. Work Package 4 will focus on how to translate research into practice, working with key policy makers, intermediaries, and activists to explore the development of urban policy following the programme of research in each city. Work Package 5 will focus on how to maximise the impact of research in education, particularly focusing on the education of planners in the Global South. Finally, Work Package 6 will examine the UK-based capacities to deliver ODA-research for urban equality, seeking to strength current areas of work and develop a new transdisciplinary field of research practice. KNOW will be coordinated by the Bartlett Development Planning Unit, a recognised institution with a track record of 60+ years of applied research to deliver socially and environmentally just cities in the global south. KNOW also build on a consolidated network of partners in urban areas, capable to deliver an ambitions, international, and interdisciplinary urban research. These partners constitute the locus for a worldwide network of Urban Hubs that, strengthen by the experience in KNOW, will deliver a long-term agenda of research for urban equality.

The basic shape and branching structure of a tree can be distinctive and characteristic, yet there exists no consistent dataset quantifying how tree form varies across species and how it is related to other functional traits of a tree. Understanding the variation in structure and form of trees is important in order to link tree physiology to tree performance, scale fluxes of water and carbon within and among trees, and understand constraints on tree growth and mortality. These topics hold great importance in the field of ecosystem science, especially in light of current and future changes to climate. It is surprising, therefore, that tree structure and form are currently neglected areas of study. There are two primary reasons for this neglect: 1) it is difficult and time-consuming to quantify tree structure in-situ and 2) there is a lack of theory that explicitly links tree form parameters with physiological function. Recent developments in technology and theory now enable us to overcome these limitations. In this proposal we aim to use new ground-based 3D terrestrial laser scanning technologies (TLS) in combination with recently developed theoretical frameworks to measure and compare tree architecture. We focus on the tropics, since (i) they host the vast majority of broadleaf tree diversity and play a disproportionate role in global and regional carbon and water fluxes, and (ii) the high species diversity of tropical forests (typically 100-250 tree species per hectare) means we can sample a large number of species under almost identical climate and soil conditions, making it more likely to detect overall tendencies in tree form response to environment that are not dominated by the peculiarity of a particular species. Specifically, we will employ TLS to collect highly-detailed 3D structural information from mature rainforest trees spanning contrasting environments ranging from cloud forests to wet rainforests to dry savanna, and contrasting biogeographical histories from the cloud forests of the Andes through legume-dominated forests of Amazonia and Africa, through the dipterocarp-dominated tall forests of Borneo, to the ancient rainforest flora of Australia. All field sites are locations where we have already collected information of the leaf and wood traits of a number of tropical trees. We plan to achieve three goals: i) definition of quantitative classes of tree form using advanced imaging and computational techniques, ii) development of an understanding of the degree of covariance between tree form and tree leaf and wood functional traits, and the degree of phylogenetic constraint and plasticity in tree form, iii) testing and refinement of metabolic-scaling based approaches to scaling fluxes and productivity of tropical tree communities. Over the course of three years our team will: 1) Create a database of branch- and canopy-level trait data collected from our field campaigns. 2) Use variation in branching architecture and canopy structure traits to define a suite of branching and canopy traits that allow for the classification of tree form. 3) Assess the scaling of tree form traits within trees and integrate the scaling of tree-form into a mechanistic plant scaling framework. 4) Explore the link between tree-form traits and leaf and wood traits to determine a whole-tree integrated economics spectrum. In doing so, we hope to acquire a mechanistic understanding of the relationship between tree form, function, phylogeny and environment over a large spatial scale. We expect to find that behind the dazzling variety of shapes and forms found in trees hides a remarkably similar architecture based on fundamental, shared principles.

Andean countries face major challenges in meeting demand for water among different sectors, while making water available for low-income groups and conservation needs. In Peru, Ecuador, Colombia and Bolivia, the recognition, management and valuation of the watershed services that support ecosystems and people has been weak. Yet, assuring the supply of water for these demands by improving watershed management has become increasingly important, especially in the context of climate variability and the growth of agribusiness and mining. Payment for Environmental Services (PES) schemes have become a popular policy strategy for assuring the supply of water in Andean countries. They are often supported because they enable low-income communities living in upstream areas to increase their incomes by 'selling' healthy watershed services to downstream users, such as water utilities and industries. For example, in Ecuador, water utilities pay campesinos [peasant smallholders] with land near their drinking water sources to not use fertilizer or pesticide, or to leave their land fallow, so as not to pollute rivers. PES schemes are based on important assumptions about the behaviour of ecosystems and people, and their interactions. For example, it is widely thought that preventing deforestation upstream will protect water flows downstream, and many PES schemes are based on this relationship. However, this does not apply to all conditions, as sometimes deforestation can increase water flow. A further problem in Andean countries is that little is known about their native ecosystems, and there is very little data available to improve our understanding of them. These assumptions about the relationships between ecological processes and human activity are also often over-simplified. This type of approach is problematic because it pays little attention to wider political and economic factors that shape resource use at the local level. This often results in low-income people being held responsible for environmental degradation, and policies that are based on these inaccurate understandings (such as planting trees in headwaters in the high Andes) can damage ecosystems and jeopardise poor people's livelihoods. More importantly, PES schemes fail to consider the rules and institutions that campesino and indigenous groups already have in place to manage their water sources and environments. These comprise local knowledge, forms of community organisation, customs and values, that these groups use in their everyday lives. These existing institutions and practices cannot simply be erased, and so it is important to consider them when designing PES initiatives, rather than looking to override them. In order to analyse these key assumptions about watershed services in Andean and Amazonian catchments, and to be able to assess the appropriateness of PES schemes for places inhabited by low-income campesino and indigenous peoples, the key research question for this project is: How are the ecological and social dynamics of watershed services in Andean and Amazonian catchments understood and managed by different actors (scientists, policymakers, communities)? By asking this question, we seek to better understand how watershed processes function in landscapes that are shaped by both ecological and social dynamics; to get insights into the ways in which understandings of watershed processes - both scientific and local - influence traditional management and PES schemes; and to analyse how these perspectives and practices could contribute to equitable watershed management in Andean countries.