Conservation and environment
Research Topic
Language: English
This is a research topic created to provide authors with a place to attach new problem publications.
Research problems linked to this topic
- What are the interventions needed to reverse climate change or at least hold it steady to begin to mitigate the multiple stresses it causes?
- Consistent and long-term environmental monitoring: Time-series increase in value for ecology and policy making as they grow in length. Decades of data are required to answer emerging questions around, for example, climate change impacts on biodiversity and the efficacy of management measures
- What are the actions that will have the biggest impact on restoring freshwater habitats as far as possible to more naturally functioning ecosystems?
- What is the status of our natural environment, is it being effectively monitored to note change in the UK and globally? We require robust, reliable data and information that can be used to assess status and trends in the natural environment (genetic and species diversity and trends, invasive species, habitats extent, condition and character, as well as soils and ecosystem services and functions)
- How can we effectively use nature on our land to help provide the services we need (carbon uptake, flood defence, resilience through biodiversity, clean air and water, recreation for public health and so on) and balance the provision of these services?
- How can we assess and mitigate systemic risks involving environmental factors? What are the best approaches for monitoring that tracks system dynamics based on key ‘watchpoints’ to trigger mitigation actions?
- How can we build resilience of biodiversity and society to climate change through ecosystem restoration, better land management, and land use?
- How could technology and data be better utilised to identify, classify and monitor biodiversity alongside transport infrastructure? What can asset managers in the transport sector learn from other sectors in this area.
- As well as modelling and understanding major land use change (for example from agriculture to forestry), how can we understand the effects of more subtle changes in land management across wide areas (for example changing tillage practice)?
- How can we most effectively implement nature-based solutions, such as tree planting and peatland restoration, to address climate change, support progress to net zero carbon emission, reduce biodiversity loss and prevent poverty?
- How will the economic impact of coronavirus affect governments’ ambitions for climate change targets and biodiversity? What opportunities are afforded the UK in its efforts to tackle the global threat
- What are the positive and negative environmental impacts of increasing renewable energy production (wind, solar, geothermal, and so on) and other actions taken to decarbonise the economy?
- How do we better understand the impact of the past, the pressures on the present, and the changes of the future when understanding water and the environment?
- How can we best model and understand the impacts on a global level of environmental policy actions?
- Climate change and pollution are some of the greatest anthropogenic threats to wild animals.
- How much has trade increased/decreased global emissions, through improving production processes and accentuating market failures?
- How can a more strategic approach to land use be developed through aligning climate change objectives (adaptation and mitigation) with objectives for biodiversity and ecosystem services? How can the environmental co-benefits of mitigation actions be identified and quantified?
- What are the broader environmental consequences of changes to the housing and planning system, and what is needed to support a lower-carbon future?
- What is the impact of rising sea level on coastal systems, natural, and human? Can natural systems help to mitigate against coastal incursion and degradation?
- What actions would most effectively and efficiently improve the status of the natural environment and secure economic, social, and health benefits domestically and globally?
- How can local planning for nature-based solutions be best reconciled with regional and national strategies? What are the most effective ways to combine place-based participatory approaches with evidence and analysis of the likely effectiveness of nature-based solutions?
- What is needed to enhance or create natural areas to provide nature-based solutions?
- Where are the skills and capabilities missing within the infrastructure construction and maintenance industry to effectively conserve and enhance biodiversity and implement biodiversity net gain?
- Global drivers of declines in nature are well documented but we need to understand how drivers interact in the UK and globally, as well as the global impacts of UK activities. We also need to understand how our actions to address declines (such as policy responses, intervention and environmental management) impact drivers
- How to measure ecological connectivity and design coherent ecological networks through nature restoration?
- What new environmental techniques should be utilised in the analysis of road schemes that are not currently set out in Transport Analysis Guidance?
- Assess how marine protected areas can act as nature-based solutions to the effects of climate change by sequestering carbon
- How can we manage the land to provide benefits to society and minimise harm to the aquatic ecosystem?
- Reducing policing’s environmental impact
- Using climate-smart management, how do we best protect marine biodiversity that might change as a result of climate change?
- How can the UK develop measurement of carbon fluxes from different habitats and farming systems which are in different conditions and using different management approaches? This is especially relevant for peatland and coastal habitats
- How can we design and embed robust, cross-cutting indicators of, and improve our understanding of, human, animal, plant, and environmental health in systems under pressure from climate change?
- How can BDUK determine and understand what biodiversity impacts are attributable to our interventions?
- What evidence and methods are required to minimise the distortionary effects of carbon border taxes, and overcome the technical obstacles of tracking embedded carbon?
- Where do interactions exist between climate adaptation in transport infrastructure and other net zero or natural environment policies? Are there any co-benefits/trade-offs and how can we implement solutions that deliver on all these priorities?
- How do we protect pollinators and maximise beneficial insects?
- How can we improve the management of our ecosystems, including biodiversity loss, chemical pollution, environmental degradation, and the introduction of alien species, to reduce the risk of infectious zoonotic, animal, and plant diseases?
- How can society and government act to protect and enhance nature, thereby sustaining the ecosystem services (including mitigation and adaptation to climate change) it provides, under a changing climate?
- What is the evidence on the most efficient means of securing environmental enhancement through the planning process? What is the evidence on how environmental and biodiversity gains agreed through the planning process are realised and sustained?
- Which trade policy levers could have the greatest impact in terms of reducing global emissions? Which are the most realistic mechanisms to achieve clean growth?
- How can the vulnerability and role of habitats alongside transport infrastructure be better understood regarding climate change, pests, and disease? How can we increase resilience?
- Assess and explain the impact of AHT sectors on climate change and contribution to net zero objectives. What works to mitigate the sectors’ impact to climate change and achieve these objectives?
- How to optimize the deployment of different nature-based solutions to realise their various benefits and avoid negative outcomes (for example some tree planting on peatland)?