The UK Status, Change and Projections of the Environment (UK-SCAPE) programme is one of UKCEH’s major activities delivering significant UK National Capability. Its vision is the development of a whole system approach to addressing environmental challenges in the UK. This requires recognising that land, soil, water, air and biodiversity are deeply interconnected systems.

The UK-SCAPE mission is to:

  • Work towards and promote an integrated understanding of the dynamics of our environment
  • Support the community in the provision of data, models and knowledge based resources
  • Shape the direction of future ecological and hydrological research
  • Enable the UK to deliver a world leading, sustainable system of environmental management and conservation.

UK-SCAPE draws upon UKCEH expertise and capability to deliver monitoring and observation across a range of environments. This underpins new research and data science activities that build upon and extend established areas of UKCEH's portfolio.

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Organisation

UK-SCAPE comprises over twenty projects and two research programmes, each addressing its own science questions and providing fundamental research and outputs for the wider community.

Projects

Established UKCEH activities form the monitoring component of the programme. They draw upon UKCEH expertise and capability across multiple disciplines: earth observation, data science, technology, sensor networks and citizen science.

Research programmes

The two UK-SCAPE research programmes, SPEED and SOC-D, aim to deliver much needed new understanding and tools to support the UK’s environmental research, management and decision-making communities.

Work packages

A holistic, integrated approach looking at the wider landscape will provide multiple benefits for researchers, the economy, the environment and people. To this end, UK-SCAPE includes the four work packages described below through which its projects and research programmes are managed. Additional work packages cover UK-SCAPE coordination and stakeholder engagement.

An integrated monitoring programme for the natural environment
This national-scale programme will allow better understanding of the status and dynamics of air, land, soil, water and biodiversity. It builds upon established approaches while incorporating advances in sensor technology and data analytics. It will provide multi-scale data and metrics to support emerging research priorities.

Lead scientist: David Roy
Browse our projects
Using scientific case studies to develop accessible evidence through a data science framework
Developing a data science framework (DSF) through selected case studies will create a step-change in the ability of the research community and other stakeholders to understand, predict and manage the environment. This will facilitate the creation of, and access to, new and innovative data products, development of new models and generic analytical methods, as well as the provision of cloud-based collaborative research environments.

Lead scientist: John Watkins
Read more about the DSF
Providing maps of environmental drivers under different future scenarios (SPEED)
SPEED will provide mapped projections, based on IPCC global scenarios, of harmonised future changes in climate, land use and pollution at discrete time steps up to the year 2100. This will provide researchers with a consistent set of spatially-explicit scenarios, enabling integration and prioritisation across research disciplines on impacts and responses to environmental change.

Lead scientist: James Bullock
Read more about SPEED
Soil Organic Carbon Dynamics and the consequences for soil function (SOC-D)
Soil organic carbon (SOC) underpins key soil functions such as water regulation, climate mitigation and nutrient provision. Informed, sustainable management of organic carbon in soils mitigates climate change and secures healthy productive soils for future generations. SOC-D will identify and map key biotic and abiotic drivers of SOC change in UK soils, providing new national data.

Lead scientist: Jack Cosby
Read more about SOC-D

Collaboration

Critical to the success of these activities is working in partnership with experts both within UKCEH and externally. Each science project has its own community and these partnerships are essential for policy or regulatory applications and for ongoing research.

Funding

The five-year UK-SCAPE programme is funded by the Natural Environmental Research Council as part of a National Capability Science Single Centre award.