The UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UKCEH) has been awarded £29.9M to deliver the National Capability for UK Challenges ‘Understanding the UK Environment’ programme. The programme will deliver integrated monitoring, modelling and data for the UK environment empowering researchers, governments and businesses to tackle major environmental challenges of our time.
This funding by the Natural Environment Research Council, part of UK Research and Innovation, is part of a larger £101 million investment to research centres and key partners to provide essential national long-term environmental science capabilities, expertise and services for research on atmospheric, marine, polar, freshwater, and terrestrial environments. The projects will support large-scale environmental observations, modelling and analysis, and research capabilities through innovations in platforms, sensors and data science.
Commenting on the funding announcement Dr Doug Wilson, UKCEH Science Director said, “At a time of environmental and climate change, long-term monitoring, data and modelling are extremely important. The funding will not only enable researchers and others to understand how the environment is changing, it will allow us to work with the community to improve and provide information that is integrated and easy to access.
“As a strategic delivery partner for the Natural Environment Research Council, UKCEH delivers impartial environmental science to benefit the UK research community, governments, businesses, and wider society. We will broaden our reach through our new National Capability programme to improve understanding of what challenges to air, land and water need addressing and find new ways of working to help tackle them.”
The National Capability for UK Challenges programme focuses on four key themes:
- Hydrological extremes: Providing data, models and insights to increase our resilience to floods and droughts.
- Land use and net zero: Measuring how changes in land use impact greenhouse gas emissions, in order to support net-zero goals while protecting natural resources.
- Pollution: Analysing how pollutants affect ecosystems to inform clean air, clean water and sustainable soil strategies.
- Biodiversity: Understanding biodiversity loss on land and in water, and providing monitoring, data and models to support nature restoration.
The aim is to deliver integrated data across land, water and air to allow researchers to study the environment as a whole system.
This funding has been awarded from NERC’s National Capability Single Centre Science and National Public Good initiatives, one of the UK’s largest environmental science investment programmes.