Many of the poorest people in the world rely on the benefits provided to them by ecosystems, or ecosystem services (ES), at a subsistence level. Decision-making leads to changes in the physical and biological environment, affecting the provision of ES, and thus levels of poverty, at spatial scales from local to global, and temporal scales from the present to centuries. Currently, decision-support approaches lack an integrated modelling framework that can cope with the interactions between biophysical processes, socio-economic behaviours and governance (the structures and processes by which society makes decisions and shares power), and provide tools to support decision-making among the web of stakeholders which manage various aspects of ES. A major scientific challenge is to develop a quantitative approach that can link the biophysical effects of decisions with their impact on different ES in order to predict how they will affect the livelihood of communities across these various scales. Yunnan Province, China, is characterised by high rates of poverty, most of the poor living in fragile mountainous ecosystems with low agricultural potential and dependent on a range of ES provided by the forested slopes. These ES play a vital role in sustaining human well-being, not just at the local scale, but also for communities at the wider catchment, national and international scales (e.g. flood control, carbon sequestration). The exploitation of these ES, driven by intensification of local agriculture, development and forestry policies, has caused rapid land-use change, which has led to soil erosion, flooding and the subsequent loss of ES. Responding to this the Chinese government has introduced two policies, the Sloping Lands Conversion Policy (SLCP), and the Natural Forest Protection Programme (NFPP). However, these centrally enforced programmes have led to negative impacts on livelihoods, ES provision and the wider environment. We will develop a consortium project to build an integrated landscape-scale biophysical model to assess the temporal and spatial impacts on ES of forest-management policies in Yunnan, especially those arising under the SLCP and NFPP. We will identify the explicit linkages between this model and poverty indicators, particularly for the rural poor, and use these tools to explore forest policy and management options that optimise the delivery of landscape protection, ES and poverty alleviation benefits, across local to catchment scales, now and into the future. We will use participatory assessment of ES and livelihood strategies, modelling of catchment scale biophysical processes, spatial Bayesian Networks to model the interaction between ES and poverty, economic valuation, understanding of governance processes, and social-ecological system modelling, to predict the level of ES provision and poverty under different policy and climate scenarios. This will create a decision tool for use in policy design in China and inform the growing international debate about bringing ES into the mainstream of policy-making. We bring together a leading UK academic institution (University of Sheffield), a high profile international NGO specialising in applied research (IISD) and a UK private consultancy with proven experience and excellent contacts in China (Scott Wilson Ltd), to produce research that is both cutting edge and relevant. We will develop partnerships with government and research institutions at the national (Beijing) and regional/local (Yunnan) level, gain input from NGOs and using participatory approaches to involve local communities. Integration of their experience and expertise into the research development from the outset is key and ensures that the decision-tool will meet their needs, balancing the need to develop with the conservation of ES.

Mercury is found in many consumer products, including LCD screens and energy-efficient lightbulbs. It is emitted to the environment when products containing mercury are disposed of, as well as from industrial processes such as coal fired power plants. Mercury can, however, be a human health hazard; particularly as it has a tendency to accumulate in fish. Consequently, the UK together with it's European neighbours has been for a number of years trying to find ways of reducing the amount of mercury in the environment. Within the next three years a total ban on mercury in consumer products will be introduced to further curtail the amount of mercury entering the global environment. Mercury is also emitted into the environment from a number of natural sources such as volcanoes, but there are significant uncertainties as to the relative contribution of these natural sources versus industrial processes and consumer products. We will only be able to confirm with reasonable confidence whether the above European Union policies have had the impact intended once we fully understand the contribution of both man-made and natural sources of mercury. We wish to establish a knowledge transfer network to bring academic institutes, industry and government together to address some of these questions. This will be done by means of workshops, reports and a website. By bringing together these three sectors, the Initiative will provide government with the opportunity to explicitly request information from academia and industry which will help to guide and formulate future mercury policy. Only through mutually beneficial interaction will be able to successfully develop and implement policy which will reduce the risk from mercury in the environment.

This research project focuses on sustainable intensification of agriculture in highly productive peri-urban farming areas in China. This agricultural base is essential to meet China's increasing food production demands but is under pressure from urban pollution inputs, soil and water pollution from farming practices - particularly extensive use of mineral fertilisers and pesticides, and urbanisation. We will quantify the benefits and risks of a substantial step-increase in organic fertiliser application as a means to reduce the use of mineral fertiliser. Our approach is to study the role of soil as a central control point in Earth's Critical Zone (CZ), the thin outer layer of our planet that determines most life-sustaining resources. Our Critical Zone Observatory (CZO) site is the Zhangxi catchment within Ningbo city, a pilot city of rapid urbanization in the Yangtze delta. We will combine controlled manipulation experiments of increased organic fertiliser loading with determination of soil process rates and flux determinations for water, nutrients, contaminants, and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions across the flux boundaries where the soil profile interfaces with and influences the wider CZ; surface waters and aquifers, vegetation, and the atmosphere. To guide the research design we have identified 3 detailed scientific hypotheses. 1. Replacement of mineral fertiliser use by organic fertiliser will shift the soil food web for N/C cycling from one dominated by bacterial heterotrophic decomposition of soil organic matter (SOM) and bacterial nitrification to produce plant available N and loss of soluble nitrate to drainage waters, to one dominated by heterotrophic fungal decomposition of complex, more persistent forms of OM to low molecular weight organic N forms that are plant available. This change in N source will increase SOM content and improve soil structure through soil aggregate formation. 2. Increased use of organic fertiliser from pig slurry (PS), and wastewater sludge (WS) will lead to increased environmental occurrence of emerging contaminants, particularly antibiotics and growth hormones. Environmental transport, fate and exposure must be determined to quantify development of microbial antibiotic resistance and other environmental and food safety risk, and develop soil and water management practices for risk mitigation. 3. Decreased use of mineral fertilisers and increased use of organic fertilisers will reduce environmental and food safety risks from metals contamination; this is due to lower metal mobility and bioavailability from redox transformations, reduced soil acidification and increased metal complexation on soil organic matter. Our programme of research will conduct the manipulation experiments across nested scales of observation with idealised laboratory microcosm systems, controlled manipulation experiments in field mesocosms, pilot testing of grass buffer strips to reduce the transport of emerging contaminants from the soil to surface waters, and field (~1ha) manipulation experiments. Mechanistic soil process models will be tested, further developed to test the specific hypotheses, and applied to quantify process rates that mediate the landscape scale CZ fluxes as a measure of ecosystem service flows. GIS modelling methods include data from characterisation of a subset of soil properties and process rates at a wider set of locations in the catchment, together with catchment surface water and groundwater monitoring for water and solute flux balances. The GIS model that is developed will identify the geospatial variation in nutrient, contaminant, and GHG sources and sinks and will be used to quantify fluxes at the catchment scale. These results will determine the current baseline of ecosystem service flows and will evaluate scenarios for how these measures of ecosystem services will change with a transition to widespread of organic fertilisers through the farming area of the catchment.

This research project focuses on sustainable intensification of agriculture in highly productive peri-urban farming areas in China. This agricultural base is essential to meet China's increasing food production demands but is under pressure from urban pollution inputs, soil and water pollution from farming practices - particularly extensive use of mineral fertilisers and pesticides, and urbanisation. We will quantify the benefits and risks of a substantial step-increase in organic fertiliser application as a means to reduce the use of mineral fertiliser. Our approach is to study the role of soil as a central control point in Earth's Critical Zone (CZ), the thin outer layer of our planet that determines most life-sustaining resources. Our Critical Zone Observatory (CZO) site is the Zhangxi catchment within Ningbo city, a pilot city of rapid urbanization in the Yangtze delta. We will combine controlled manipulation experiments of increased organic fertiliser loading with determination of soil process rates and flux determinations for water, nutrients, contaminants, and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions across the flux boundaries where the soil profile interfaces with and influences the wider CZ; surface waters and aquifers, vegetation, and the atmosphere. To guide the research design we have identified 3 detailed scientific hypotheses. 1. Replacement of mineral fertiliser use by organic fertiliser will shift the soil food web for N/C cycling from one dominated by bacterial heterotrophic decomposition of soil organic matter (SOM) and bacterial nitrification to produce plant available N and loss of soluble nitrate to drainage waters, to one dominated by heterotrophic fungal decomposition of complex, more persistent forms of OM to low molecular weight organic N forms that are plant available. This change in N source will increase SOM content and improve soil structure through soil aggregate formation. 2. Increased use of organic fertiliser from pig slurry (PS), and wastewater sludge (WS) will lead to increased environmental occurrence of emerging contaminants, particularly antibiotics and growth hormones. Environmental transport, fate and exposure must be determined to quantify development of microbial antibiotic resistance and other environmental and food safety risk, and develop soil and water management practices for risk mitigation. 3. Decreased use of mineral fertilisers and increased use of organic fertilisers will reduce environmental and food safety risks from metals contamination; this is due to lower metal mobility and bioavailability from redox transformations, reduced soil acidification and increased metal complexation on soil organic matter. Our programme of research will conduct the manipulation experiments across nested scales of observation with idealised laboratory microcosm systems, controlled manipulation experiments in field mesocosms, pilot testing of grass buffer strips to reduce the transport of emerging contaminants from the soil to surface waters, and field (~1ha) manipulation experiments. Mechanistic soil process models will be tested, further developed to test the specific hypotheses, and applied to quantify process rates that mediate the landscape scale CZ fluxes as a measure of ecosystem service flows. GIS modelling methods include data from characterisation of a subset of soil properties and process rates at a wider set of locations in the catchment, together with catchment surface water and groundwater monitoring for water and solute flux balances. The GIS model that is developed will identify the geospatial variation in nutrient, contaminant, and GHG sources and sinks and will be used to quantify fluxes at the catchment scale. These results will determine the current baseline of ecosystem service flows and will evaluate scenarios for how these measures of ecosystem services will change with a transition to widespread of organic fertilisers through the farming area of the catchment.