Environment, agriculture and food strategic research programme 2016-2021

Natural Assets

The research in this Theme focuses on Scotland’s land-based natural assets of soil, fresh water and biodiversity, and the ecosystem services (including cultural services such as recreation, heritage, spiritual, amenity, and health) which they support.  The research to undertaken will use improved understanding of underlying biological and physical processes to inform the prediction of risks and impacts of change on Scotland's natural assets, and develop effective approaches and tools for their policy and management.

WORK PACKAGE 1.1: SOILS

The aim of Work Package (WP) 1.1, is to develop new tools and approaches for the sustainable management of soils in Scotland, so that they can continue to provide the range of benefits required of them.

Soils provide us with crucial benefits while at risk from numerous drivers of change. They are required to support a number of functions from the same land and landscapes, such as food production, biodiversity conservation, nutrient cycling, carbon storage and the regulation of water quality.

This WP will improve our knowledge and understanding of soil processes and how these contribute to the functioning and resilience of soils in Scotland.

The focus is on semi-natural systems including peatlands, machair, extensive grasslands and low-input arable and will complement work on water (WP 1.2) and biodiversity (WP 1.3). All three WPs will contribute to work on integrated approaches to land management (see WP 1.4). Relevant findings from both intensive and extensive agricultural systems will be brought together via collaboration with Productive Land Use Theme researchers (e.g. WP 2.3). WP 1.1 outputs will also enhance our ability to monitor soils and assess how the benefits they provide are affected by disturbance, supporting the implementation of the Soil Monitoring Action Plan.

A diverse team of natural scientists and socio-economic researchers will work with stakeholders (e.g. via the Soil Engagement Group) to develop tools for decision makers, and raise awareness of how sustainable management and restoration of degraded soils can benefit society. Case studies developed and tested through research will be used to demonstrate sustainable soil management practices to stakeholders.

WP 1.1 will deliver knowledge, information and tools to improve Scotland’s capacity for sustainable management of soil for multiple benefits, through:

• Experiments to explore how soil functions are affected by different management interventions,including peatland restoration and rotational management.
• Sampling and characterising soil fungal communities at different stages of peatland restoration to look at their role in restoring soil functions, including carbon and nitrogen cycling.
• Developing indicators and measures for soil nutrient cycling based on soil organisms and soil properties, and testing their performance in grassland and barley systems.
• New models of how soils in semi-natural ecosystems respond to disturbance, to assess resilience.
• A user-friendly tool to measure and manage soil structure (to help combat soil compaction/erosion).
• Field experiments and models to improve quantification of greenhouse gas (GHG) uptake and release in peatland/moorland ecosystems, including identification of ‘GHG hotspots’.
• Improved understanding of the impacts of management practices (such as muirburn) and changes in management (such as long-term agricultural intensification) on soil carbon sequestration.
• A Digital Soil Map for Scotland including risk mapping (e.g. for soil erosion) and mapping of soilderived ecosystem services (e.g. those related to soil hydrology).
• Assessment of how monetary and non-market benefits associated with soils and key soil habitats (e.g. peatlands) influence land managers’ decision-making.
• Decision tools based on cost-effectiveness and cost-benefit analyses, to help achieve peatland restoration targets and overcome barriers to managing peatlands for multiple benefits.

WORK PACKAGE 1.2: WATER RESOURCES AND FLOOD RISK

The aim of Work Package (WP) 1.2 is to develop effective ways to manage land and water to improve quality of the water environment and manage water flows, both now and under future changes in environment and society.

Understanding how the biological, chemical and physical processes within our water catchments are affected by land use and climate change, will help us design more effective actions to protect the ecosystem services which we value, such as clean water supplies, wastewater removal, aquatic habitats and species, and flood protection.

The work will provide evidence, data and tools to tackle issues such as: flood risk management using natural land features, Natural Flood Management (NFM), restoration of river channels, hydropower generation, diffuse pollution, quality of raw drinking water, waste water treatment, and impact of urban development. It will also be applied to predict future risks associated with new pollutants (including pharmaceuticals), and climate change.

Socio-economic research will also explore ways to bring different areas of water policy and management together in order to maximise benefits (e.g. flood management and the water environment), and develop strategies to encourage landowners and other stakeholders to carry out measures and best practice. The research will engage with national and local government (Scottish Government, Local Authorities), agencies and regulators (Scottish Natural Heritage, Scottish Environment Protection Agency, Drinking Water Quality Regulator), landowners and the water industry (Scottish Water) to help deliver the Water Framework Directive, Flood Risk Management Act (Scotland), drinking water quality objectives and sustainable waste water treatment.

The work is complemented by research on water in agricultural systems (see WP 2.3), and will also feed into integrated approaches to land management (see WP 1.4).

WP 1.2 will deliver knowledge and tools to:

• Design effective, nature-based measures such as NFM, rural sustainable urban drainage systems, buffer strips, and restoration of river channels, including issues of effectiveness, spatial location, scale and uncertainty.
• Model impacts, refine monitoring and improve measures to reduce diffuse pollution from nitrates, phosphorus, sediment and pathogens. Assess the risk from emerging organic contaminants (pesticides, pharmaceuticals and personal care products) to rivers and coastal waters, and develop novel materials to remove them from waste water.
• Inform the regulation of river flows from hydropower schemes to optimise economic and environmental benefits.
• Explore impacts of urbanisation upon catchments at the peri-urban interface, and opportunities to use green infrastructure to improve water quality and flows.
• Identify catchments and conservation areas most vulnerable to environmental change, and evaluate measures to mitigate the impacts of increasing water temperatures upon aquatic organisms.
• Develop novel statistical techniques for detecting and predicting sudden ecological changes (tipping points), and for interpreting high volumes of data from environmental sensor networks.
• Incorporate information on catchment management and resilience into decisions on operation of and capital investment in drinking water and waste water treatment. Evaluate risks and benefits of novel, energy-efficient systems to treat waste water using short rotation coppice and anaerobic digestion.
• Improving design and co-ordination of incentives and other policy measures to encourage and enable stakeholders to take action, including catchment partnerships and payment for ecosystem services.

WORK PACKAGE 1.3: BIODIVERSITY AND ECOSYSTEMS

The aim of Work Package (WP) 1.3 is to address key knowledge gaps in our understanding of the processes contributing to the functioning and resilience of our natural assets, in particular biodiversity. It will provide new approaches for focussing and delivering sustainable land management actions, and new metrics for monitoring the health of ecosystems and the services they provide.

The science within WP 1.3 is relevant to a broad range of stakeholders from across multiple sectors, including Scottish Government, agencies such as the Scottish Environment Protection Agency and Scottish Natural Heritage , and environmental Non-Governmental Organisations . It aims to provide information on how biodiversity helps to regulate ecosystem functions, how environmental management can impact on biodiversity and ecosystem function, and how we can target management action to achieve the outcomes – including the delivery of ecosystem services – we want.

This WP addresses the challenge of protecting and restoring our natural capital – our biodiversity and ecosystems - by combining information on ecosystem function, delivery of benefits, resilience, and management practices. It links basic understanding of the ways in which ecosystems function – and how such functions relate to different components of an ecosystem’s biodiversity – to the development of techniques for addressing and monitoring some of Scotland’s major current conservation challenges.

Overall the work within the WP links to four integrating themes which run across Theme 1 (Natural Assets) of the Strategic Research Programme: the function, health and safe limits for natural assets; the resilience of natural assets; ecosystem benefits and services; and managing natural assets.

WP 1.3 will deliver improved understanding of the processes contributing to the functioning and resilience of our natural assets, in particular biodiversity, through:

• Delivering improved understanding of the linkages between biodiversity and ecosystem function.
• Providing improved capacity for targeted environmental management through the development of Ecosystem Health metrics, including understanding how the connectivity of ecosystems might affect ecosystem function.
• In-depth understanding of the impacts of selected management interventions (including restoration) on Ecosystem Service flows, and of associated trajectories of change.
• Investigating various components of resilience to provide information that will help predict the consequences of environmental and climate change on species, habitats and ecosystem health, and to manage them such that their resilience is enhanced. 
• Research that helps Scotland meet biodiversity goals as set by the Aichi Targets, the EU Biodiversity Strategy and, specifically, the Scottish Biodiversity Strategy through considering management measures and potential options for safeguarding against biodiversity loss.

WORK PACKAGE 1.4: INTEGRATED AND SUSTAINABLE MANAGEMENT OF NATURAL ASSETS

The aim of Work Package (WP) 1.4 is to show how natural assets can be managed to achieve sustainable land use and contribute to sustainable growth of the Scottish economy, our health and well-being.

WP 1.4 will illustrate the wide range of benefits that natural assets (e.g. soils, water, biodiversity) provide to Scottish society and will use this understanding to support decision-making on trade-offs and management at national, regional and local scales. To achieve this, the WP will provide a comprehensive picture of the state of Scotland’s natural assets. It will identify the scope for delivering multiple benefits whilst ensuring the resilience of assets to change. In parallel, the WP will provide an applied demonstration of how these benefits can be delivered in practice. The WP will draw on work from across the Strategic Research Programme.

The WP will synthesise data on natural assets and their function, resilience and management across settings as diverse as peatlands, woodlands, extensive/intensive farming systems and peri-urban greenspace (Theme 1). It will also draw on data, tools and insights regarding agricultural systems and rural industries (Theme 2); and regarding rural communities and health and wellbeing (Theme 3).

The WP research is conducted at a range of spatial scales from national through regional, catchment, farm and field scale; and will set the Scottish picture in the context of international trends. This investigates how the different spatial scales of decision making are important for the sustainable management of our natural assets.

WP 1.4 will show how natural assets can be managed to achieve sustainable land use and contribute to sustainable growth of the Scottish economy, our health and well-being by:

• Using a dynamic natural assets register and natural capital accounts to illustrate how assets contribute to Scotland’s green growth aspiration.
• Identifying and quantifying trade-offs and impacts on multiple assets and ecosystem services to illustrate where we are living beyond planetary limits.
• Supporting integrated decision-making and adaptive management to protect multiple natural assets and maximise benefits in socially acceptable ways.
• Illustrating how existing and novel measures can deliver integrated delivery of benefits.