Prof Neil Edwards

The exceptionally rich biodiversity of the Amazon region has been intensively studied for over 150 years, yet we still have no comprehensive theory for its origin and maintenance. A successful theory must integrate evolutionary biology and ecology, which set out the genetic basis of adaptation and competition, together with the environmental and climatic drivers of speciation and extinction on multi-million year timescales. Our project will provide a theoretical framework that integrates all these processes, reproducing the spatio-temporal evolution of Amazonian biodiversity through process-driven computational modelling, and dramatically improving our understanding of one of the world's most critical tropical biodiversity hotspots. Biodiversity loss threatens to undermine global health, food resources and carbon cycling, and is proceeding at a dangerously unsustainable rate in the Amazon, one of the world’s most species-rich and ecologically sensitive regions. But a comprehensive, theory-based understanding of how biodiversity is generated and maintained, particularly in tropical ecosystems, is lacking, and a modelling framework built on fundamental processes is urgently needed to support the pursuit of committed biodiversity targets.

he Leverhulme Centre for Climate Change Mitigation (LC3M) will address one of the greatest challenges facing humanity in the 21st Century: global climate change. Our vision for LC3M is to develop the underlying science for safely removing large amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere to cool the planet and mitigate ocean acidification through enhanced rock weathering, a process accelerating rates of atmospheric CO2 removal and nutrient release for plant growth. Ultimately, this project will develop humanity’s capacity for sustainable removal of CO2 from the air through deployment of enhanced weathering on meaningful scales in forests and biofuel croplands, and an understanding of its Earth system feedbacks, ethics and societal impacts. No major RCUK funder has supported a disruptive thinking collaborative venture of this scope and ambition which demands forging links between disciplines and drawing together leading carbon cycle modellers, biologists, soil scientists, and social psychologists and moral philosophers.

* Create a new methodology to assess the cross-sectoral complexity and uncertainty involved in the food-water-energy nexus across scales, for Brazil in a context of global environmental and economic change. * Develop a framework of analysis and policy engagement to effectively inform and support the policy cycle in Brazil to reach objectives of sustainable development in a context of global environmental and economic change. * Develop robust quantitative evidence and novel research tools and methods embedded in highly detailed new generation computational models, which will be made available to researchers in academia, industry, civil society and government, in both the UK and Brazil. * Transfer skills, technology and knowledge to the Brazilian academic and policy community to effectively inform and guide a continued sustainability transition * Engage with the policy process and cycle to determine the role of appropriate policy instruments and how they can be best implemented, to improve resilience of the food-water-energy nexus in Brazil to global environmental and economic change. * Carry out successful demonstration of sustainability projects on the ground in Santa Catarina with key sectoral and regional policy institutions and networks whose activities impact and have influence over the nexus challenges.

The Leverhulme Centre for Climate Change Mitigation (LC3M) will address one of the greatest challenges facing humanity in the 21st Century: global climate change. Our vision for LC3M is to develop the underlying science for safely removing large amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere to cool the planet and mitigate ocean acidification through enhanced rock weathering, a process accelerating rates of atmospheric CO2 removal and nutrient release for plant growth. Ultimately, this project will develop humanity’s capacity for sustainable removal of CO2 from the air through deployment of enhanced weathering on meaningful scales in forests and biofuel croplands, and an understanding of its Earth system feedbacks, ethics and societal impacts. No major RCUK funder has supported a disruptive thinking collaborative venture of this scope and ambition which demands forging links between disciplines and drawing together leading carbon cycle modellers, biologists, soil scientists, and social psychologists and moral philosophers.

The Paris agreement commits nations to pursuing efforts to limit the global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees. This represents a level of transformation of the socio-economic and energy systems that substantially exceeds the scenarios that have been found using most conventional integrated assessment models (IAMs) based on equilibrium assumptions. Such strong mitigation also violates the pattern scaling assumptions used to derive environmental impacts in IAMs because of the rapid reversal in emissions growth. We will use a new, fully dynamic IAM that does not rely on equilibrium or pattern scaling assumptions to provide a set of more realistic dynamic pathways to reach the 1.5 degree target. The assessment will identify policy options and the degree of negative emissions required.

Large parts of the Antarctic ice sheet lie on bedrock below sea level and may be vulnerable to a positive feedback known as Marine Ice Sheet Instability (MISI), a self-sustaining retreat of the grounding line triggered by oceanic or atmospheric changes. There is growing evidence MISI may be underway throughout the Amundsen Sea Embayment (ASE) of West Antarctica. If this is sustained the region could contribute up to 1-2 m to global mean sea level, and if triggered in other areas the potential contribution to sea level on centennial to millennial timescales could be two to three times greater. However, physically plausible projections of Antarctic MISI are challenging: numerical ice sheet models are either too low in spatial resolution to explicitly resolve grounding line processes or else too computationally expensive to assess modeling uncertainties. The proposed work brings together and analyses two new datasets that complement each other in model complexity – a large ensemble generated with a low resolution model, and a small ensemble from a high resolution model – by constructing a new emulator of the relationship between them.

The project will carry out a scoping study of how climate impacts (damages functions) could be better incorporated into advanced macroeconomic models. In particular, the study will consider the diffusion of impacts across: • time • space • sectors resulting from localised impacts in regions that are particularly vulnerable to climate change. The study will consider which local impacts might have greatest global impact and therefore merit most detailed attention in further work.