Country: UK

The state of nature in cities is a topic of concern. As the proportion of the global population in urban areas nears 60%, it has become vital to consider ways we can protect nature in these human-dense areas.

The urban sprawl brings with it fragmentation, and losses of ecological connectivity and biodiversity. This impact is well-known and motivated Target 12 of the Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) to “increase the area and quality and connectivity of, access to, and benefits from green and blue spaces in urban and densely populated areas”. In addition to the targets of the GBF the London Boroughs have Local Neighbourhood plans, the London Environment Strategy and the City Plan, all of which include guidelines to green London. But, as of yet there is no ecological assessment of the city as a whole.

Few papers have employed ecological evaluations used in so-called “natural” areas within the urban context, fewer still looking in London. I hope to perform such an assessment and provide a pathway to creating an urban landscape for nature and people. I will assess ecosystem structure and composition through the AGILE initiative mapping program, and quantify ecosystem connectivity through models like Circuitscape, the Spatial Resilience Index, Graphab, and/or Conefor.

Then I will consider ecosystem functioning, looking at urban heat island mitigation, carbon storage, flood prevention, and air quality improvement. I also hope to look at the state of ecosystem services and avenues for improvement. This would involve crossovers between biodiversity and social science, such as health, wellbeing, natural capital, and the impact of biodiversity on people.

This would generate an assessment of the impact of people on nature and nature on people, considering the way the city currently is and ways this could change not only in London but in cities worldwide.

This project will focus on testing the co-benefits of green infrastructure and nature-based interventions on mental health and human wellbeing at different scales in the UK and expand to the Global South. The overall aim is to provide evidence through a multi-scale analysis of green infrastructure and mental health, encompassing national (macro), regional (meso), and local (micro) perspectives at population level within the UK.

From the national level, the project will start by quantifying how much green space is needed to provide justified mental health benefits, as well as determining the format in which those benefits should be. To answer this question, the first study is an assessment of the mental health impact of an urban forestry rule: the 3-30-300 on population mental health outcomes. The 3-30-300 rule sets guidelines for cities to ensure fair access to nature. It suggests that people should be able to see three trees from their home, have a neighbourhood with 30% tree coverage, and be within 300 meters of a green space. The project plans to test whether the different components of these three rules make a difference in mental health outcomes and if tree canopy density might have a threshold in impacting resident’s mental health.

Following that, the project will test whether different types of green infrastructure might have different impacts on mental health and how the relationship differs when looking at self-reported mental health and wellbeing status versus NHS diagnosis records. The second study is designed as a spatial-temporal disparity in the relationship between different types of green space and objective mental health outcomes, considering urban, peri-urban, and rural contexts and socio-economic factors. The study will employ longitudinal data of mental health outcomes, alongside green space indicators such as grassland, woodland, trees, and water bodies. The aim is to identify how green space type, quality, and accessibility impact mental health and whether these effects vary across socio-economic groups and geographic settings.

On the regional level, the third study will investigate spatial and social disparities of school greenness and the impact on physical activity and mental health in children and adolescents. This study will explore the impact of school greenness on the physical activity, mental health, and overall well-being of children and adolescents in Liverpool and Oxfordshire, UK. Using longitudinal survey data, the study will examine spatial and socio-economic disparities in school greenness and their associations with health and well-being outcomes. The research aims to provide actionable insights for improving school environments and informing urban planning and environmental policies that promote healthier, more equitable settings for young people.

The national and regional findings from the initial research plan will then lead to the next stage of the project, which will focus on a local case study of the co-benefits of green infrastructure.

Wendee is a postdoctoral researcher in the Health and Wellbeing theme at the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery and Flourishing and Wellbeing Theme of the Oxford Health Biomedical Research Centre.

Rewilding is a nature recovery approach that prioritises functionalism and ecosystem autonomy, using low-impact interventions that aim to create resilience and self-regulation. However, whilst rewilding has seen many successes above-ground, little attention has been paid to those communities below. This project responds to the call to improve our knowledge on the responses of below-ground taxonomies generally by studying mycorrhizal communities at the Knepp Wildland, a large ~3500acre ex-farmland site in West Sussex, UK. This site provides unique opportunities to study one of our longest, largest, and more mature rewilding projects and the dynamic environment created by its reintroduced disturbance actors.

Mycorrhizal fungi build symbiotic relationships with plant roots, exchanging nutrients that usually helps bolster survival for both fungi and plant. Mycorrhizal fungi send out long, thin strands of hyphae that explore the local soil environment and forage for resources, extending the reach of the roots far beyond the traditional rhizosphere. These strands come together to form mycelium, which can fuse with those extending from other plants to create extensive common mycorrhizal networks. These networks help seeds germinate (with some completely dependent on them!), aid plants in their growth and survival, and have been reported to translocate resources and nutrients around the soil system. These characteristics make this a ‘keystone’ below-ground organism, making their study imperative as they could be an important ingredient to catalysing UK nature recovery.

Utilising novel technologies, this project uses soil eDNA to resolve changes to both mycorrhizal community composition and function to see if rewilding is serving the below-ground ecosystem as it is above. A space-for-time comparison to a local conventional farm is used to track change from the initial land-use to the outcomes seen ~20 years later. It is hoped that as these new technologies become cheaper and more widespread, frameworks such as this can be more routinely applied to nature recovery monitoring, normalising the inclusion and consideration of soil biodiversity in these initiatives.

We have large eDNA datasets for both fungi and bacteria and would be open for collaboration.

71% of the UK land area is farmland, which without transformation will mean no realistic chance of solving this nations biodiversity crisis. Regenerative agriculture promises a way to farm with and bolster nature, helping provide the many varied habitats and resources needed for functional and flourishing ecosystems, whilst also helping feed the country. This project aims to assess the ecological impact of arable regenerative agriculture methods on soil biodiversity, helping build an evidence base to reveal how these organisms drive this approach.

Utilising the emerging framework of ecosystem energetics, this project aims to apply this methodology to the soil environment to establish a consistent approach to assessing nature recovery progress in this traditional ‘black box’. By tracking energy flows from the sun to the soil, we can follow its cascade through the below-ground food web to understand where it pools and flows. With energy translating into the ability to ‘do work’, we can use this as a proxy to understand how the activities of these organisms emerge to provide services we take advantage of for farming, such as water infiltration and nutrient cycling, amongst others. In comparison with chemical farming, we aim to show how these organisms support regenerative agriculture without expensive or environmentally damaging additives.

Working at FarmED in the Cotswolds, we are able to take advantage of their 8 year arable chronosequence and conventional control plot to demonstrate the ecological impact of herbal leys and their lingering effects during cropping to reduce our reliance on agrichemicals. Taking the opportunity this novel chronosequence provides in one location, we have built a very large and detailed dataset for each plot, accounting for its diversity of soil life (micro, meso, and macrofauna), soil characteristics (pH, SOM, cations, particle size, temperature, moisture, bulk density), and net primary productivity (vegetation biomass, dung, and respiration). It is with this data that we ultimately aim to build a streamlined and unified framework for assessing nature recovery in soils, and encourage its routine monitoring as apart of restoration initiatives.

We are open to collaboration and are keen to be able to use this wealth of data to understand more about these systems to help accelerate UK nature recovery.

Tree pests and diseases are doubling every decade, some of which cause widespread damage to existing woodlands. Ash dieback (Hymenoscyphus fraxineus), a disease caused by an ascomycete fungus, has killed millions of ash trees in Europe. It is estimated to cost £15 billion in Britain, and a population decline of ash obligate and highly associated species. Forests across the world face similar challenges, where tree pandemics eradicate certain species within decades, followed by slow forest recovery.

The increasing interconnectedness of our world through trade and travel, and the lack of biosecurity, have accelerated the spread of invasive tree pests and pathogens. Despite plant sanitation regulations, the exponential growth of these threats continues. While early detection and response can sometimes be useful, in most cases, it is too late to effectively control the disease. In addition, some disease agents may suddenly reproduce fast when climate conditions exceed specific thresholds. In a world with rising temperatures and changing precipitation regimes, we are not sure whether this will lead to unforeseen disease outbreaks and severe ecological consequences.

This project focuses on predicting ecological effects of tree pests and pathogens in the future. As part of an NERC-funded project on ash dieback, we established experimental plots in Wytham Woods (Oxford) in 2020 to monitor the disease’s impact on tree health, nutrient cycling, habitat structure, woodland connectivity, and biodiversity. With the support of the Scottish Forestry Trust, we are developing a comprehensive global database of tree pest and disease outbreaks, covering a wide range of disease types. Through developing a wealth of data and modelling products, this project seeks to forecast future tree mortality rates, changes in nutrient cycling, and their consequences for forests in a changing world. This will be crucial for tree pest management and mitigating, which are important for successful nature recovery.

In this Social Sciences Engagement Fellowship project, we are partnering with the youth-led nature recovery organisation Youngwilders to explore the strategies, policy frameworks, collaborations, and funding opportunities that can support the participation of young people (aged 18-30) in nature recovery-related activities. The project also seeks to enhance the partner organisation’s ability to support this participation by identifying and co-developing new engagement activities and co-designing their approach to impact evaluation.

The main ongoing activities of the project are:

• Working with landowners and young people across 6 small-scale nature recovery sites across England and Wales to develop and pilot a year-long ‘project officer’ programme in which young people are placed into paid decision-making roles within an active nature recovery project, co-design management plans and interventions for the sites, and engage in monthly seminars and knowledge-sharing activities with their cohort of young project officers.
• Assisting Youngwilders with reviewing their activities and impacts to date, written up into an Impact Report for dissemination to partners and funders, and co-designing their long-term impact evaluation approach.
• Working with the European Young Rewilders network coordinated by Rewilding Europe to develop knowledge exchange activities, including a ‘Readwilding book club’, to build shared understanding and new networks among young nature recovery practitioners working across Europe.
• Launching a special issue of ‘Routes: The Journal for Student Geographers’ on young people and rewilding together with journal editors Dr Jonathon Turnbull and Dr Liam Saddington

Connections between inequality of income and green space accessibility (1), and between green spaces and the benefits they realise for human well-being and the natural environment (2), especially to the most social-economically deprived tiers of society and their lived areas (3) have been investigated and established.

This project takes an intra- and inter-community comparative approach across three urban areas of Oxford characterised by different indexes of multiple deprivation (IMD), with the most deprived one identified as priority neighbourhood by the active programme in the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery on ‘Equitable distribution of nature-rich accessible green space: An Oxfordshire case study‘ led by Martha Crockatt.

By employing a mix method approach, the study investigates community values in urban green spaces through walked interviews (Walk&Talk) in parks and green spaces participants use the most in their own lived area and considers the imaginary of the ideal green space residents have in mind when engaging in such conversations. Residents’ imaginaries are captured through a sketch-based method supported by the artist Harmanpreet Randhawa. Eventually, it considers the equity of local urban green governance in Oxford in the forms of Neighbourhood Plans or Re-generation plans.

Not only it is important that communities are consulted and engaged in planning of urban green spaces to facilitate a re-localisation of these and the development of a sense of stewardship. Community engagement should be done in a way that celebrates the plurality of values and preferences of the bio-culturally diverse society in Oxford. The project design and community engagement strategies employed have been developed in a place-based approach with the support of a network of local NGOs, community and resident associations, and local representatives.

1. Lovell et al., 2020; Smith, Hafferty and Seddon, 2023; Twohig-Bennett and Jones 2018; van den Berg et al., 2015
2. Aerts, Honnay, and Van Nieuwenhuyse, 2018; Sandhu et al., 2022.
3. Brown et al., 2016; Croackatt et al., 2023; Maas et al., 2009; McEachan et al., 2016; Smith, Hafferty and Seddon, 2023; Sudimac, Sale, and Kühn, 2022.