Soil is, and always will be, a very valuable resource. Soil is critical for food production and regulating several services to the wider environment, such as flood regulation and storing carbon.

Despite many initiatives to safeguard biodiversity, recent analyses and reports show that biodiversity continues to decline at the global level.

We are currently facing three major global challenges: climate change, biodiversity loss and the development of sustainable food production systems. Ideal solutions to these challenges would be ones that deliver win-wins, addressing at least two of these simultaneously.

The Scottish Government is currently responding to a multitude of grand and complex environmental challenges, such as biodiversity loss and climate change. But how do we know if these responses, or the money spent on delivering them, are having the desired effect?

In this project we looked at what makes people care about peatland restoration. Peatbogs are important because of their ability to store carbon, regulate water flows and provide a home for rare species of plants and animals. Nevertheless, peatbogs are often described as a hard-to-love ‘Cinderella habitat’.

The following case study summarises work delivered as part of a recent SEFARI Fellowship with the Cairngorms National Park Authority (CNPA).

Since the emergence of late blight (Phytophthora infestans) in the 1840s this disease has presented a major challenge to the potato industry, with annual losses estimated to be £55 million in the UK.

Infrared (IR) Spectroscopy is a versatile analytical technique that can characterise a wide variety of different sample types e.g. from drugs and plastics to soil and minerals.

River temperature influences biogeochemical processes and aquatic ecology. Sustaining cool river temperatures in Scotland is essential for aquatic ecology (including the habitat and health of Atlantic salmon (Salmo Salar) and brown trout (Salmo trutta).

Our natural environment is facing threats from a range of environmental drivers, including climate change, invasive non-native species, novel pests and diseases, over-exploitation, and pollution.

This case study will summarise ongoing research on Teladorsagia circumcincta, one of the most common and economically important endemic parasites to control in sheep in the UK.

In May 2017, the Cabinet Secretary for Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform announced commissioning of “research into the costs and benefits of large shooting estates to Scotland’s economy and biodiversity”1. The focus of the Cabinet Secretary’s announcement was ‘driven grouse shooting’.

Beef production is very important for Scotland's economy (economic output of £851 million in 2017) and for providing the high quality and iconic, ‘Scotch Beef’ brand.

Decisions about natural resources need to balance multiple interests and goals in order to safeguard Scotland’s economic, social and environmental prosperity.   However, many existing policies for the environment focus on separate problems, such as pro

We have created a state-of-the-art, and free to download, desktop app to provide climate change risk assessments for crops pests and diseases in the UK that anyone can use.

A large proportion of the Scottish strategic road network in the Highlands is vulnerable to landslides.

Recently there has been a rapid increase in the spread and number of non-native tree pests and pathogens around the world. Traditionally the impact of tree diseases and pests has been assessed in terms of their impact on forestry and the loss of wood products.

Scotland has committed to peatland restoration as part of its array of policies to tackle climate change.