Land-use and agriculture are responsible for around one quarter of all human greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. While some of the activities that contribute to these emissions, such as deforestation, are readily observable, others are not. It is now recognised that freshwater ecosystems are active components of the global carbon cycle; rivers and lakes process the organic matter and nutrients they receive from their catchments, emit carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane to the atmosphere, sequester CO2 through aquatic primary production, and bury carbon in their sediments. Human activities such as nutrient and organic matter pollution from agriculture and urban wastewater, modification of drainage networks, and the widespread creation of new water bodies, from farm ponds to hydro-electric and water supply reservoirs, have greatly modified natural aquatic biogeochemical processes. In some inland waters, this has led to large GHG emissions to the atmosphere. However these emissions are highly variable in time and space, occur via a range of pathways, and are consequently exceptionally hard to measure on the temporal and spatial scales required. Advances in technology, including high-frequency monitoring systems, autonomous boat-mounted sensors and novel, low-cost automated systems that can be operated remotely across multiple locations, now offer the potential to capture these important but poorly understood emissions. In the GHG-Aqua project we will establish an integrated, UK-wide system for measuring aquatic GHG emissions, combining a core of highly instrumented 'Sentinel' sites with a distributed, community-run network of low-cost sensor systems deployed across UK inland waters to measure emissions from rivers, lakes, ponds, canals and reservoirs across gradients of human disturbance. A mobile instrument suite will enable detailed campaign-based assessment of vertical and spatial variations in fluxes and underlying processes. This globally unique and highly integrated measurement system will transform our capability to quantify aquatic GHG emissions from inland waters. With the support of a large community of researchers it will help to make the UK a world-leader in the field, and will facilitate future national and international scientific research to understand the role of natural and constructed waterbodies as active zones of carbon cycling, and sources and sinks for GHGs. We will work with government to include these fluxes in the UK's national emissions inventory; with the water industry to support their operational climate change mitigation targets; and with charities, agencies and others engaged in protecting and restoring freshwater environments to ensure that the climate change mitigation benefits of their activities can be captured, reported and sustained through effectively targeted investment.

Climate change is one of the major threats of the 21st Century both nationally and globally. This requires a joint response of mitigation and adaptation as enshrined in the UK Climate Change Act, which mandates a Climate Change Risk Assessment (CCRA) every five years and a quinquennial National Adaptation Plan (NAP) to adapt to the climate risks that are identified. Assessing climate risks and adaptation in a consistent manner is scientifically challenging as climate change is manifest in multiple ways (rising temperature and sea level, changing precipitation, etc.) and impacts every human and natural system. Further there are direct and indirect impacts as these effects cascade and interact with other sectors which are often changing due to non-climate processes. Any proposed adaptations need to be assessed in a similar manner including direct and indirect effects and unintended consequences. Earlier UK climate assessments did not fully address this challenge relying in part on expert synthesis for integration, potentially leading to an over focus on direct consequences and leading to inconsistencies between sectors and between adaptation options. The OpenCLIM project is designed to support UK assessment of climate risks and adaptation needs, and future CCRAs and NAPs in particular, by developing and applying a first UK integrated assessment for climate impacts and adaptation. First and foremost we aim to develop an open, innovative and flexible platform to provide an improved capacity for the next CCRA and NAP. Our model will consider UK-wide climate impacts and adaptation in biodiversity, agriculture, infrastructure and urban areas, considering the impacts of flooding, heat stress and changing temperature and precipitation. It will also consider two detailed case studies: (1) an urban analysis of Glasgow and environs (the Clyde); and (2) a more rural analysis of the Norfolk Broads and environs. These will serve as a demonstration and validation exercise to inform the national analysis. Secondly, we will also design an open-access platform with a strong legacy which is flexible to allow further development of the integrated model beyond this funding. We aspire to develop a community model where new and improved models could be easily incorporated and innovative science and new policy questions investigated. Hence future CCRAs and NAPs could be linked to a living science process, drawing on evolving understanding and stakeholder needs. This would include improving knowledge in established sectors and areas, and developing better sectoral linkages and interactions, as well as adding new models of less established sectors and areas as they emerge, including the ability to reframe and pose new questions. Recognising the significant challenge of achieving this second goal, our model will be developed within the UKCIRC DAFNI (Data & Analytics Facility for National Infrastructure) facility for High Performance Computing. The platform will be designed to take the UKCP18 and new UK socioeconomic scenarios to ensure the best scientific inputs. The approach will be explicitly spatial and allow highlighting of geographical hotspot areas and the prioritisation of risks in a systematic and consistent manner including tabulation and mapping of outputs. The models that are included are all physically-based (rather than emulators or rules-of-thumb) and this will enable the generation of new research insights, including climatic risks in the UK. Importantly, the use of physically-based models will allow credible simulation of conditions that have not been previously observed and improve confidence in the results compared to earlier analyses.

Peatlands store more carbon than any other terrestrial ecosystem, both in the UK and globally. As a result of human disturbance they are rapidly losing this carbon to the atmosphere, contributing significantly to global greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. We propose to turn this problem into a solution, by re-establishing and augmenting the unique natural capacity of peatlands to remove CO2 from the atmosphere and to store it securely for millennia. We will do this by working with natural processes to recreate, and where possible enhance, the environmental conditions that lead to peat formation, in both lowland and upland Britain. At the same time, we will optimise conditions to avoid emissions of methane and nitrous oxide that could offset the benefits of CO2 removal; develop innovative cropping and management systems to augment rates of CO2 uptake; evaluate whether we can further increase peat carbon accumulation through the formation and addition of biomass and biochar; and develop new economic models to support greenhouse gas removal by peatlands as part of profitable and sustainable farming and land management systems. Implementation of these new approaches to the 2.3 million hectares of degraded upland and lowland peat in the UK has the potential to remove significant quantities of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, to secure carbon securely and permanently within a productive, biodiverse and self-sustaining ecosystem, and thereby to help the UK to achieve its ambition of having net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

This proposal builds upon four related research projects: Norwich University of the Arts Impact Case Study, Public engagement with the Norfolk Broads, enhancing public understanding and engagement with nature conservation (2019); Visualisations of space debris (Off Earth. NIXON. 2021); Building Platform Technologies for Symbiotic Creativity in Hong Kong (NIXON Et al, 2021) and Future Cinema Systems (NIXON Et al, 2022). Working in close partnership with the Broads Authority and using archive material and maps contained in the Strategic Flood Risk Assessment report 2018 (a detailed study of the impacts of rising sea levels and effects of Climate Change), using 3D modelling, and volumetric video, I will create realistic and immersive visualisations, which reimagine past, present, and future landscapes accurately, depicting the Broads and East Anglia coastal areas under threat from rising sea levels. Practice-based research will be presented in visually aesthetic and immersive form within a specialist visualisation system, where viewers can experience the East Anglia and Broads landscape by moving through a virtual world, viewing realistic representations which will be augmented with flood risk visualisations, enabling audiences and stakeholders to experience, explore and consider the effects of flooding upon the Broads and East Anglia coastline. The specialised screen and sound system will provide the viewer with enhanced immersion, creating a greater sense of embodiment, and presence. This research combines latest volumetric capture and advanced 360-degree screen and surround sound technologies to create a platform for immersive content development and viewing. Through the integration of these technologies and powered by artificial intelligence, deep learning, virtual reality, augmented reality, interactive narrative and generative aesthetics, the system will deliver innovation. Working together they will create a new interactive and immersive architecture for participant spectators. The system will be a vital resource for practice-based research and experimentation to explore archive content, aesthetic, and cultural domains, generate digital assets for training and education in health, sport and architecture and areas where the accurate simulation of real-life situations is applicable. The system will enable audiences to explore the landscapes of the past, present, and future with greater immersion measured by considering image quality, 3D vision, field of view, tracking level, sound quality, user perspective and resolution. The system contains highly immersive characteristics, thus providing greater sensations of embodiment, and through viewing autonomy will provide the viewer with enhanced sensations of presence, in virtual environments, presence is understood as place illusion-the qualia of being located inside the virtual word (Slater, 2009). To achieve the goal of introducing new artistic expression and content through the system I will focus on leveraging important developments on machine learning, and generative models, providing a platform for artists and designers working with Generative Adversarial Networks and Creative Adversarial Networks. The project will facilitate greater collaboration between creative practitioners, and the technology sector.The outcomes will include new creative media practice, and immersive and interactive image experiences which can be exploited by the scientific, creative, and cultural industries and provide innovative ways of engaging in global challenges.

This project stems from a current research project: AHRC Pathways to Understanding the Changing Climate: time and place in cultural learning about the environment. It takes what we have learnt about children's relationships with their dwelling places and how intercultural interchange influences that as a starting point for facilitating an ongoing pilot project in South Africa namely the Aller River Pilot Project (ARPP). The goal of the ARPP is to engage local communities in the rehabilitation of a local waterway that is crucial to the livelihoods of these communities. The project's main strategy for delivering this rehabilitation and sustained maintenance is to recruit, train and stipend a group of young people from communities along the river (the 'Eco Champs'). These young people will lead the rehabilitation through engaging the local community and the schools in the local community. Our input (PUCC FOF) will begin at the end of the first phase of the ARPP when the main rehabilitation work of the river will already have been completed. We will continue the work with the Eco Champ team and the eco clubs that they will have set up in schools in the community. We will use our method of child-led walking interviews to develop a cartogram of the communities and to identify what sorts of relationships the children in these urban settings along waterways have with their dwelling places. We will use this as the basis for the interchange element of our project. The interchange partner in the UK will be a group of young people in the Norfolk Broads called the Youth Rangers who will be working with the Broads Authority (BA) to reconnect with their local waterways. The participant-led walking interviews alongside a stakeholder consultation conference will be used to identify small scale infrastructure support to facilitate the sustainability of the rehabilitation work. The projected outcome of this project for the community in South Africa will be an explicit and consolidated sense of personal connection to dwelling places including local waterways and an enhancement of commitment to maintaining these in a state that will contribute to the health and wellbeing of the local communities that rely on it for sanitation. Similar (if less extensive) outcomes are projected for the Youth Rangers in the Norfolk Broads. We will measure our impact through the data gathered during the walks that will be completed at the beginning and the end of the project and we will also use the data gathered by the ARPP and BA to elaborate our understanding of how our intervention has impacted on the local community. Our work has the potential to contribute to the following Sustainable Development Goals: Goal 3 (Good Health and Wellbeing), Goal 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation), Goal 10 (reduced Inequality), Goal 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities) and Goal 17 (Partnerships for the Goals). Examples of how this will be achieved are the improvement in health and sanitation and through the stronger social cohesion, enhanced commitment to community responsibility, effective local agency and a deepened sense of an explicit connection to place. This project will instigate collaboration between people in similar circumstances with regard to the role of water in their dwelling places. The partnerships created will have significant potential for the way in which locally affected communities respond to globally determined consequences of changing climates, in both the meteorological and socio-political sense. Moreover, this project extends the interdisciplinary collaboration between Education and Social Anthropology which will further the aims of the network for the Living with Environmental Change Initiative. Whilst this is not intended to be a research project we will be able to use the impacts of the project to elaborate our understanding of the relationships that children have with place and how global interchange affects that.