Cryptogams (mosses, lichens) are a conspicuous part of the ecology of alpine and higher-latitude ecosystems, and are important for cycling carbon and nutrients. In particular, how cryptogams take nitrogen from the atmosphere (N-fixation), could be of considerable importance in these systems, where nutrients are generally not easily accessible by plants and microbes. Our understanding on these processes is poor, especially in the alpine, and especially for times of the year outside of the main summer growing season. This is concerning given how climate change is disproportionally effecting higher latitude, higher elevation, ecosystems, and through changing snow-cover, affecting winter strongly. This also means that understanding the role cryptogams plays in global climate modelling is not well resolved, and in ecosystem where they are abundant, this is a shortcoming. Cryptogams also have a diverse microbial community inhabiting the aboveground parts. As part of a complex microbial food web, this includes photosynthesising organisms and microbes that can fix atmospheric nitrogen. Currently, we have little information on the molecular ecology of these communities, and if the structure and function of the microbe-cryptogam system varies over time, and amongst different cryptogams. To understand this, and how alpine cryptogams function over time and in response to changing energy and nutrient availability, we will study four different species of cryptogams in our fieldsite in the Cairngorms of eastern Scotland. In this sub-arctic alpine environment, we will measure how C and N are captured and cycled by cryptogams, measure for the first time how these processes occur under snow, and track the fate of C and N into soils. We will use shading methods to change how C enters to the system, allowing us to determine how cryptogams change their nutrient cycling under altered energy availability. Together, these investigations will help us better model how these ecosystems under a changing climate, and increase our understanding of the ecology of the cryptogamosphere.

Aonachadh (un-ach-A) is gaelic for coming together, for two faces of a mountain that meet to form a uniting ridge. Building on and expanding an existing network of over 280+ organisations, we will bring together a wide range of stakeholders interested in investable biodiversity uplift projects. We will develop methods for creating standardised, accessible, and verifiable data, metrics and tools for voluntary biodiversity markets, and co-create research questions and a programme of work that can lead to a common framework for data gathering and business models and community engagement methods acceptable to supply-side projects as well as demand side investors. Research activity will enable us to come together in workshops and working groups to collaboratively co-create research questions, and then share, discuss and learn from lessons emerging from biodiversity uplift pilot projects engaging with voluntary markets in Scotland. Our research network - of established and emerging projects, financiers and policy makers - will contribute to NERC's Nature Positive Future programme from the unique context of Scotland, which is experiencing unprecedented increases in land values alongside a land reform agenda that seeks to deliver benefits from biodiversity markets for local communities. Scotland's place-based approach to ecosystem market development provides a unique opportunity to understand interactions between biodiversity, finance and society and what this means for environmental and economic resilience. Recent and ongoing work from the core team, and established connections with UK stakeholders and channel partners Ecosystems Knowledge Network and the Green Finance Institute, means we can initiate a quick start for more results and impact.

Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.

Kew's gardens, collections and research offer extraordinary opportunities to artists. Informed by an analysis of selected arts collaborations at the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew since the 1960s, 'Future Ecologies of Art' is the first interdisciplinary project that explores Kew's potential to work with artists on diverse and inclusive storytelling about two specific issues: the climate crisis and social justice. Increasingly botanic gardens are turning to artists to create links between scientists, horticulturalists and the public in order to expand their narratives. The project traces these developments and proposes to take botanic gardens seriously as sites of experimental artistic research and engagement. It emphasises the power of artists to capture imaginations, advance alternative and interdisciplinary forms of knowledge-creation and inspire audiences. The project maps arts collaborations, their evaluations and learnings at Kew via interviews with artists, curators, archivists and scientists as well as through archival research. In this context, it asks how diversifying access to collections and centring artists from marginalised backgrounds can feed into future arts projects. Here it places particular emphasis on investigating - with artists and researchers at Kew - how the increasingly urgent themes of the climate crisis and social justice can be mediated by artistic practices and support Kew's mission to protect plants and fungi for the wellbeing of people and all future life on the planet. The project investigates how art can build bridges between disciplines and audiences in the context of the botanic garden to give visibility to the climate crisis and social justice. It is structured in three phases, (1) an initial phase of scouting interviews, strategy and literature analysis, (2) a research development phase including interviews with Kew staff and artists who have worked with a range of botanical organisations (3) a public outcomes phase which will see two teaching collaborations with UK universities (the MA Art and Ecology at Goldsmiths and the BA Fine Art at Chelsea College of Art), two workshops, two journal articles and a best practice report for Kew. Throughout each phase it is also informed by a placement with the Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh to explore its arts strategy, broken down into three one-month research stays. The project is situated in the interdisciplinary Plant Humanities and dialogues with museum and heritage studies, particularly a recent focus on diversity, equity and inclusion. It also responds to recent developments in contemporary art theory and art history, especially current turns to ecology and social justice in art practice and a cultural climate in art institutions where artists globally critically engage with plants. It takes seriously Kew's recent commitment to arts collaborations which was highlighted in Kew's Manifesto for Change (2021) aiming to bring together artists and scientists to explore storytelling; and in the current Science Strategy (2021) as a commitment to arts collaborations as societal bridges. The project is conceived around the following research question: Drawing from Kew's history of arts collaborations, how can present and future artistic collaborations support GLAM sector organisations to explore diverse storytelling around the themes of climate crisis and social justice? It is further structured around these guiding questions: - How have official collaborations between Kew and artists evolved and been evaluated since 1960? What have been avenues for informal collaborations? - How can Kew encourage artists from marginalised backgrounds to work with collections? - How can art collaborations strengthen Kew's mission and advance interdisciplinary forms of knowledge-creation? - What roles can artists take in botanical research organisations to interpret collections for different audiences, and how can these translate to teaching materials?

Smell is one of our most important and powerful senses, affecting our emotions and helping us form new memories. Interest in capturing and synthesising scents to create multi-sensory experiences in museums and galleries is growing. In the natural world scent is also a key tool in the identification of plants and fungi, and it is generally acknowledged that the ability to distinguish between smells increases as individuals become more experienced with the process. This project aims to investigate the role scents and smelling have in our experiences of international cultural heritage collections. Through the creation of artistic and inclusive interpretations of fungus biodiversity, the project will reveal a new olfactory dynamic to our engagement with both tangible and intangible cultural heritage. Using an experimental practice-based approach, the project will explore how odours of living collections and archival material at the Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh (RBGE) and Regional Gardens, alongside characterisations of scent in the art of mushrooms, can be captured, contextualised and communicated to engage diverse audiences with heritage smells. The project will use James Sowerby's (1797-1809) 'Coloured figures of English fungi or mushrooms' as a case study. In collaboration with University College London's Institute of Sustainable Heritage, the project will also analyse and interpret the odour of a first-edition copy of Hadrianus Junius (1564) 'The Description of the Phallus', a sixteen-page pamphlet held in the KB National Library of The Netherlands, The Hague, that describes in prose, poetry and woodcut illustration the dune stinkhorn Phallus hadriani, and is believed to be the earliest printed work dedicated to a single species of mushroom. The project will be approached through a range of creative and interdisciplinary heritage practices, including the documentation and critical analysis of historical and contemporary artworks depicting mushrooms; video and photography of living and dried fungus specimens in the RBGE Herbarium; and exhibition curation informed by creative responses to other related items held in other UK archives. A series of outputs will be delivered, including: an artist's essay film combining documentary footage, studio animation, voice and new music composition; a contribution to a fungus-themed contemporary art exhibition at Inverleith House, RBGE (autumn 2024); a creative events and community engagement programme aimed at the wider public and staged across all four Regional Gardens; an in-house publication featuring new writing, photography, and reproductions of mycological art from the RBGE and affiliated collections; plus publications in peer-reviewed journals aimed at the arts and heritage sector. Through the case study of stinkhorns, and by working in partnership with the RBGE, Regional Gardens and global partners, an innovative method will be developed for the promotion of heritage scents as a valuable resource for diversifying audience engagement with gardens and fungi. This practice-based approach can be repeated at other GLAM institutions worldwide and is thereby potentially of national and international significance.