We are faced with meeting the agricultural demands of a growing population estimated to reach 9.8 billion people by 2050 on soils depleted of essential nutrients, with declining yields and a projected reduction in future rainfall in key agricultural regions. A circular economy between agriculture and organic waste streams can recycle essential resources for farming through the recovery of water, biomass, and nutrients from sanitation waste solids, effluents, and livestock manure at scale. This offers benefits to agroecological practices in farming by reducing the reliance on chemical fertiliser inputs with multiple benefits that improve soil health, reduce greenhouse gas emissions from farming, and reduce water pollution in drainage from fields. However, there are potential risks and challenges associated with this solution and these need to be fully understood to enable resource recovery to operate in a safe and sustainable manner in the long term. Firstly, the gastrointestinal tracts of humans and animals are a source of pathogens to the environment and agriculture food chain. So, reusing these wastes could potentially spread these pathogens to the food crops we consume. Secondly, manure and sewage are sources of veterinary and medical chemicals to the environment; these compounds can enhance a microbe's ability to resist treatment drugs, such as antibiotics. This ability to resist treatment drugs can spread to other microbes important for plant, animal, and human diseases. Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a global public health crisis that is predicted to cause 10 million deaths per year by 2050. Currently, livestock and the environment are recognised as reservoirs of antimicrobial resistant microbes and implicated in the dissemination of these AMR microbes. Science-based methods to assess the environmental, livestock and human health risks of combined exposure to antimicrobial selective compounds and AMR microbes are therefore central to fully realising the potential benefits of a sanitation-agriculture circular economy. Models, analytical tools, and quantitative assessment methods to understand, measure and assess the impacts of agricultural exposure routes urgently warrant scientific attention. Through understanding the safety risks recycling waste streams pose, new interventions can be devised to minimise these risks, making resource recycling a viable mechanism to increase soil and farm productivity. Working with water utility companies and the National Pig Centre, we will investigate how water and farm waste can be recycled to be used in agriculture. Using laboratory models, we will identify where pathogens and chemicals aggregate along the different waste streams, thus identify where interventions need to be made. Using this information, we will define a risk assessment analysis to tackle pathogen and chemical buildup. We propose to build on the 'one-health, one environment' approach to AMR by acknowledging the connectivity between humans, animals and the environment. This project will support the development of a UK sanitation-circular economy and build a UK-led innovation network with global reach. The overall aim of the project is to build a community of educational, industry, farming, and government colleagues to increase the capacity of the UK to address global pollution challenges associated with adopting a circular economy to support agricultural production. A circular economy approach is essential in meeting global agricultural needs, especially enhancing the role that farming can play in climate control and our need to move towards Net Zero greenhouse gas emissions. This proposal will pave the way in achieving this goal whilst minimising the impact of utilising waste materials on the environment and animal and human health.

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is when microorganisms, including bacteria, are no longer effectively treated with antimicrobials, such as antibiotics. The environment is continually polluted with antimicrobials from a variety of direct and indirect sources, where they become heavily diluted. However, there is compelling evidence that even these very low antibiotic concentrations can increase AMR. Little research has investigated how contamination of the environment with antibiotics, particularly complex mixtures of antibiotics present in human and animal waste, can select for AMR. These data are urgently needed to design effective environmental mitigation strategies to reduce the probability of AMR emerging from polluted natural environments. Further, several fundamental questions surrounding AMR evolution at low, environmental concentrations remain unanswered. These knowledge gaps preclude understanding of whether reducing environmental contamination to below a given selective antibiotic concentration will be an effective strategy to constrain AMR evolution. This project will generate the largest, publicly available database of the lowest antibiotic concentrations that increase AMR, both for individual compounds and antibiotic mixtures, filling a significant research gap. Previous research on antibiotic mixtures has focused on therapeutic concentrations and simple mixtures (i.e., clinical antibiotic combinations) and so is not environmentally relevant. This project will use bottom-up and top-down approaches to explore AMR evolution in environmental bacterial communities exposed to environmentally relevant antibiotic mixtures and concentrations in controlled experiments. Unexplored aspects of AMR evolution will also be addressed. For example, what are the key factors that might impact a bacterial community's long-term carriage of AMR and its ability to evolve AMR if exposed to antibiotics again in the future. Understanding these dynamics is important for predicting effects of mitigation strategies that aim to reduce or remove antibiotic pollution in different environments. This project will generate a variety of empirical data to inform a model that will explore important evolutionary mechanisms that underpin these dynamics. A combination of well-established experimental evolution microcosms, robust chemical analyses, innovative modelling, and reliable molecular microbiology techniques such as next generation sequencing will be used to increase understanding of AMR evolution. These data will contribute to development of appropriate and robust environmental quality standards for antibiotics and will be shared widely through existing and new key stakeholder collaborations. Ultimately, these findings will improve protection of the environment, human health, the global economy, and food security by limiting the development of AMR in the environment.

Flooding represents the most serious environmental threat to the UK today. It is a problem predicted to increase over the next few decades. The urgency with which collective responses must be found to this, and other climate-related challenges, is reflected in the recent shift in vocabulary: we no longer talk of a crisis but an emergency. Positive responses to the flood threat will require a unity of action between central government and local authorities, environmental agencies, academics, and the public. Key to future flood control will be the fundamental decisions now being taken over how the UK landscape can be best managed. Within many quarters there is a dawning realisation that if the country is to become more flood resilient, landscape change may have to be radical in conception and bold in undertaking. To be both practicable and deliverable, it is essential that the positive benefits deriving from new configurations of the landscape are communicated effectively to communities affected by change if the transition is not to be resisted and delayed. This Research Network, led by scholars from the Arts and Humanities, draws together those with interests in the historic and contemporary environment, with perspectives to offer on the past, present, and future shape of the British landscape and societal responses to flooding. This Network focuses, in the first instance, on those landscape decisions that are required to be taken to build greater flood resilience in England and Wales. Over time, the Network will look to broaden its remit to the whole of the UK and beyond. The Network aims to break down academic silos, and in particular collapse the Arts and Humanities-Science divide. Crucially, the Network will involve representatives from those agencies currently charged with building and delivering flood resilience across the country. It has the express ambition of contributing substantively to current discourse and debates surrounding the most appropriate and deliverable responses to the rising flood threat in the UK. In particular it looks to fully exploit the unique, and largely overlooked, contribution that Arts and Humanities readings of the long-term development of the British landscape and societal responses to flooding, might make in creating more flood resistant communities and landscapes into the future. Three questions, which can only be fully addressed through interdisciplinary treatment, have led to the creation of this Research Network and guide its agenda. First, can we or should we continue to rely on on hard engineered defences as the principal method for mitigating floods or should we be moving towards softer natural flood management strategies? Second, what lessons can be drawn from the ways in which communities have responded to flooding in the past and the land management practices they adopted to mitigate against floods: might these provide templates for the future? Thirdly, in recognising that landscape change will impact people's existing relationship with, and appreciation of, familiar landscapes, how, where, and in what ways might this required transformation be best and most sensitively achieved? The Network responds directly to those responsible for flood management and delivering these necessary landscape changes and what they desire from the academy in order to fill evidential gaps they have identified and which they want in order to enhance their current practice. It will establish a new research agenda in which Arts and Humanities research will play a central role in future proofing the UK landscape against the rising threat of flooding. Providing a research focus for the Network with the potential to deliver more immediate impact, the Network will work closely with the Environment Agency as they develop and deliver their plans for the future sustainable management of the low-lying, flood-protected landscape of Isle of Axholme in north Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire.

The Water Framework Directive (WFD) is an important piece of legislation for the management and protection of natural water resources. Its implementation is at river basin level with a requirement to achieve 'good status' for water bodies by 2015. Published River Basin Management Plans e.g. for the Thames, describe the catchment, the pressures that affect it, the risks these pose to achieving 'good status', and the measures needed to achieve the environmental objectives. Just 26% of water bodies in the Thames are predicted to meet good status by 2015. The reason for a failure of good ecological status is often uncertain or unknown. The potential for scientists to improve this understanding is high. However, academics have been identified by the Environment Agency (EA) as not having been engaged in the development of the Thames Plan. The EA has identified specific knowledge gaps regarding implementation of the Plan, which are directly relevant to NERC and the wider scientific community. The Better Thames Network will provide a knowledge exchange mechanism between stakeholders e.g. the EA and the Thames River Basin District Liaison Panel, and scientists to help address the knowledge gaps. Network working groups will focus on specific issues in the Plan which, if addressed show the greatest promise to improve the prognosis for the Thames. It will act as a point of contact advisory service for stakeholders to help refine, and attempt to answer specific questions and for scientists to identify stakeholder needs in order to frame research programmes. The Network will provide access to expertise and act as a conduit for knowledge transfer between scientists in institutions in and around the Thames river basin, and through them to contacts with appropriate expertise beyond the river basin. In addition the Network will provide advice and expertise to stakeholders relevant to local delivery of the plan. The Network will not focus on national policy, but on implementation of WFD within the Thames district. It will connect NERC scientists local to the river basin with local stakeholders tasked with operational delivery of the basin plan. The objectives for the Network are to: (1) define knowledge gaps in the Thames Plan where knowledge exchange can make a contribution; (2) map the research community with relevant expertise in the Thames region; (3) run workshops with stakeholders and scientists focused on key knowledge gaps; (4) facilitate multidisciplinary collaboration within the workshops to refine questions, highlight relevant data and literature, and when necessary identify what new research is needed; (5) provide a mechanism for stakeholder access to academics to address specific local questions relevant to the implementation of the Plan, and allow academics access to stakeholders in order to frame research activities; (6) use the workshops and research community mapping to develop a web based portal and database that provides access for stakeholders to expertise. Specific outputs will include a database containing outcomes from the mapping of academic expertise within (and as necessary beyond) the Thames region held on an open access web portal. The web portal will also provide access to a bibliography focused on identified knowledge gaps; links to other information portals for the EA and stakeholders; and information on the Thames Basin Management Plan and linked data from the EA. Outputs from the workshops will be a tailored briefing document for the EA and Thames Liaison Panel focused on either filling the identified knowledge gap or framing research questions to address the knowledge gap, as well as articles in a peer reviewed journal. The ultimate measure of success of the Network will be achieving improved implementation of the Thames Plan i.e. above the 26% predicted good status by 2015. Equally important outcomes include facilitating engagement between the EA, stakeholders and the NERC scientific community.

Leicester City is ranked 16th out of the 4,215 settlements assessed within England in the National Priority Ranking in terms of surface water flooding risks (Defra 2009). Fluvial flood risks are also considered high due to its geographical and geological setting. A Multi-Agency Flood Plan (MAFP) is coordinated by the Local Resilience Forum for Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland (LLR LRF) in 2012 and it is regularly reviewed by its constituent organizations. The plan makes arrangements and provides information for multi-agency response to flooding incidents, aiming to: (i) provide a framework for the coordination of a multi-agency response to flooding events in the LLR LRF area; and (ii) link and coordinate Local Authority, Community Flood Plans and individual agencies operational plans relating to flooding. According to the CCA 2004, the local responders in the MAFP are divided into two categories, with a different set of duties on each. Those in Category One are organisations at the core of the response to flood emergencies (e.g. local authorities and emergency services). The LLR LRF recognizes that the successful implementation of MAFP requires the key operational and stakeholder organizations (e.g. Fire & Rescue, A&E and water companies) to provide efficient and non-disruptive services collectively. This, to a large extent, depends on the functioning of critical infrastructure nodes and networks. The LLR LRF seeks to understand how robust, the MAFP is in terms of its dependency on the critical infrastructure in a changing climate. In addition, its core organizations (e.g. Leicester City Council, Leicestershire Fire & Rescue Service) are keen to understand the robustness of their specific organizational plans, including the Local Authority Plan and Emergency Services Plan. For example, if a designated shelter/reception centre is at risk of flooding, it may have a cascading effect on the way that evacuation and rescue operations are carried out. Similarly, a damaged electricity substation may affect the functioning of infrastructure services that effective emergency response replies upon. In particular, a flooded transport system may render the planned routes to rescue inaccessible, thus affecting the existing evacuation/rescue plan of the emergency services (e.g. Fire & Rescue; A&E). This project brings together a group of interdisciplinary researchers in three schools in Loughborough University, including Geography, Civil & Building Engineering, and Business & Economics, with expertise in flood risk management, climate change adaptation, emergency planning, transport response to weather conditions and resilience to flood risks, to work with the key Category 1 responders in Leicester (City Council, Fire and Rescue Service and the Environment Agency) on this issue, liaised through the Local Resilience Forum for Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland. The project will consider two types of interlinked infrastructure that are directly related to the implementation of emergency planning and response, including: (i) those functioning as operational nodes & networks, where decisions will be made, rescue will be launched and reallocation will be based; and (ii) essential utility & supporting infrastructure located in flood zones for operational reasons. Key deliverables include: 1) An assessment of the individual and networked impact of infrastructure failures. 2) A list of recommendations in the form of adaptation measures and contingency plans to the Leicester Resilience Forum's Multi-agency Flood Plan, the Leicester Fire & Rescue Service's flood response plan, and the A&E Service (through the Council). 3) Generic recommendations to flood emergency planning and response that can be readily adopted by decision makers beyond the Leicester City.