The Branching Out project has assessed social and cultural values of urban treescapes, linking a state-of-the-art values framework based on the IPBES Values Assessment (2022) to a novel transdisciplinary methodology integrating storytelling, mapping, citizen and stakeholder deliberation, and citizen science. Branching Beyond intends to package up the Branching Out framework, approach, and results in a user friendly online values porting template aimed at local government planners, tree officers, voluntary organisations and community groups. Initially compiling results from the three Branching Out case cities (Milton Keynes, Cardiff and York), Branch Beyond will develop a rapid assessment approach to 'horizontally port' these results to two replicator cities: Edinburgh and Camden (London). Horizontal portability is a highly innovative concept emerging from the field of relational values that presents an alternative to generalisation (common in quantitative research) and benefits transfer (common in environmental economic valuation) to port and adapt policy relevant research results from qualitative, deliberative and mixed method approaches, without compromising the contextualised and place-based nature of qualitative data. We will achieve this by packaging up the qualitative associations between treescape characteristics and social and cultural values previously identified through storytelling, mapping, and deliberation, and validating and refining ported results through a rapid participatory porting assessment. Finally, Branching Beyond will work with its local authority partners and the Local Government Association to develop training in and disseminate the porting template and process to further local authorities and local third sector and community groups.

Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.

The UK government plans to increase woodland cover as part of its plans to store more carbon, to mitigate climate change. However, many of the UK's trees are threatened by climate change and a range of pests and diseases, which might limit their ability to contribute to carbon storage and the wide range of other benefits delivered by woodlands. We therefore need to make our woodlands resilient to these future threats. Resilience is the ability of a system, such as a woodland, to recover from a disturbance. One commonly proposed approach to increase the resilience of woods is to increase their tree diversity. Thus, spreading the risk amongst many different trees, as we don't know exactly how each tree species will respond to climate change, nor what threats from pests and diseases they may face decades into the future. However, woodland managers have different perceptions of diversity, and how management may best deliver it, and we know that different tree species will support the woodland ecosystem in different ways. Therefore, it is important to combine stakeholders' knowledge with ecological knowledge to identify which tree species and management approaches best deliver diversification that increases resilience. DiversiTree focuses on woods dominated by two conifer species, Scots Pine and Sitka Spruce, as in the year to March 2021 54% of all new woodland was coniferous. Scots Pine is the UK's only native conifer of economic significance. It is planted for timber production but is also the dominant species in the culturally iconic native Caledonian pinewoods. Scots Pine is at risk from the tree disease Dothistroma. Sitka Spruce is not native to Britain but is our most economically valuable tree species and is at risk from invasive bark beetles and climate change. This project addresses four knowledge gaps related to the diversification of woodlands: 1) How do stakeholders understand forest diversity, their diversification strategies, and their visions and ambitions for diverse future forests? 2) Are the microbes found on the leaves of trees more diverse in woodlands with mixed tree species and does this help trees to better defend themselves against diseases? 3) How may diversification of tree species within a wood allow the continued support of woodland biodiversity? 4) How do we implement and communicate management strategies to increase woodland resilience? To address these knowledge gaps, we work across disciplines bringing together ecologists, microbiologists, social scientists, and woodland managers. The Woodland Trust is embedded at the heart of our project to enable us to co-develop and check the feasibility of our results with practitioners. Results from interviews with woodland managers, focus groups and analyses of policy documents, will be used to improve knowledge of the options for woodland diversification, and both the enthusiasm for, and capacity to, implement diversification strategies. The microbes on leaves are important for plant health. Utilizing existing long-term experiments, we will examine the microbes on the leaves of Scots Pine grown in monocultures and in mixed woods. We will assess if the diversity of microbes on a leaf increases as the diversity of tree species increases, and whether this enables the trees to resist existing diseases. Surprising we don't have lists of which species use which trees. This information is required if we are to plant trees that will continue to support woodland biodiversity. We will collate data on the biodiversity hosted by Scots Pine and Sitka Spruce and assess which other tree species could also support the same biodiversity. Finally, we bring the results together to co-develop with practitioners, management strategies for diversification and case studies illustrating how the results can be implemented. The results will be shared via videos, podcasts, social media, and practitioner notes in addition to publications in the scientific literature.

With the UK's water valued at £200 billion p.a., Britain's 389,000 km of river ecosystems are arguably our most important. In addition to providing water, they supply other major ecosystem services such as the regulation of flooding and water quality; support to adjacent ecosystems by supplying energy and nutrients; and large cultural value for charismatic organisms, recreation, and education. However, the ways in which organisms and ecosystem functions maintain these services in rivers are extremely poorly understood. This is despite large ongoing effects on river organisms from changing catchment land use, and increasingly also from climate change. Cost implications are large and result, for example, from impacts on recreational fisheries, water treatment costs, and high value river biodiversity. By contrast, opportunities to use management positively to increase the ecosystem service value of rivers by enhancing beneficial in-river organisms have barely been considered. In this project, we will focus on four examples of river ecosystem services chosen to be explicitly biodiversity-mediated: the regulation of water quality; the regulation of decomposition; fisheries and recreational fishing; and river birds as culturally valued biodiversity. Each is at risk from climate/land use change, illustrating their sensitivity to disturbance thresholds over different time scales. These services vary in attributable market values, and all require an integrated physical, biogeochemical, ecological and socio-economic science perspective that none of the project partners could deliver alone. Using river microbes, invertebrates, fish and river birds at levels of organisation from genes to food webs, we will test the overarching hypothesis that: "Biodiversity is central to the sustainable delivery of upland river ecosystem services under changing land-use and climate". Specifically, we will ask: 1. What is the range of services delivered by upland rivers, and which are biologically mediated? 2. What are the links between biodiversity (from genes to food webs) and service delivery? 3. How does river biodiversity affect the rate or resilience of ecosystem service delivery through time? 4. How do changes in catchment land use/ management and climate affect river biota? 5. How should river biodiversity be managed to sustain ecosystem services? At spatial scales ranging from small experimental catchments to the whole region, and at temporal scales from sub-annual to over three decades, the work will be carried out in upland Wales as a well-defined geographical area of the UK that is particularly rich in the spatially extensive and long-term data required for the project.

More frequent intense rainfall events, associated with climate change, increase the likelihood of shallow slope failures that lead to costly disruption of road and rail journeys, with risk to life and property. There have been recent slope failures adjacent to transport corridors in the UK, sometimes disrupting important road and rail routes for days. Vegetation has a stabilising effect on slopes: Plant root systems interlock with the soil, increasing its stiffness and strength. Uptake of water by root systems dries the soil profile, again increasing soil stiffness and strength. However, engineers need to be able to predict the combined root reinforcement and soil drying effects on slope stability, so that vegetation management can be used proactively to decrease the probability of slope failure. Vegetation has numerous benefits over conventional hard-engineering solutions, in terms of burying carbon in the soil, enhancing biodiversity, and improving the aesthetic quality of the environment for society. This project will develop and test a quantitative coupled hydro-mechanical model for the in-service and ultimate-failure performance of slopes planted with vegetation. Rooted-soil represents an innovative sustainable construction material, with distinct mechanical and hydrological properties, that can be used in geotechnical systems. The model will be applicable to both slopes covered with natural vegetation and slopes where vegetation and soil have been chosen and managed according to engineering principles. The validated model will provide a clear framework for assessment and remediation of slopes with potential for reducing economic and carbon costs. The model will be developed within a multi-scale continuum modelling framework. It will build on knowledge of the elemental components of the system, working from individual soil-root interaction, to continuum soil-root system, and to complete slope, incorporating spatial variability of materials. Modelling will be informed by X-ray CT imaging of the 3-D deformation of rooted soil undergoing shear, using the micro-VIS facility at the University of Southampton, and by field data from slopes containing established vegetation. Predictions of slope performance will be validated against scaled-slopes in the Dundee geotechnical centrifuge under different rainfall regimes. The geotechnical centrifuge enables the testing and monitoring of small-scale slopes containing roots at realistic stresses, which can be manipulated until the slopes ultimately fail. Template guidelines will be produced for a manual of combinations of plant species, soils and management schemes for optimum performance of designed soil-plant systems suited to emerging climatic conditions. Example data will also be included to allow cost-benefit analyses when designing for slope improvement using vegetation. The potential to translate research findings into related areas will be investigated (e.g. river banks, sand dunes, flood embankments, agricultural and amenity systems). We will engage with an important group of Project Partners, representing key industrial sectors and infrastructure owners, to facilitate the rapid adoption of research findings.