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The Plymouth University marine carbon team was the first to investigate ecological consequences of ocean acidification, and carbon capture and storage leakage. The findings have impacted on US legislation and are key to the UK ocean acidification research programme. The research is highlighted in the European Science Foundations' Science Policy Briefing on Impacts of Ocean Acidification (2009), the United Nations' Emerging Issues Bulletin on `Environmental consequence of ocean acidification: a threat to food security' (2010), the US `National Strategy to Meet the Challenges of a Changing Ocean' (2010) and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change `Ocean Acidification Report' (2011).
By putting public engagement at the heart of our deep-sea research, we have delivered benefits to society of generating inspiration and curiosity about science, raising public awareness of our research insights and their context, and providing cultural enrichment by supporting lifelong learning. We have achieved these impacts through: interactions with print, online, and broadcast media that have brought our research to millions; series of talks and events that have inspired specific audiences of tens of thousands; and a network of interactive online resources that has enabled people worldwide to share in our exploration of deep-ocean environments and their biodiversity.
The Open University (OU) co-produced the highest rating television natural history science programme in the UK since 2001. Input from Dr Mark Brandon's research over the last 15 years shaped the subjects to be filmed, the science portrayed, and the narrative used in the series. The impact had reach and significance: 263,000 A0 polar maps containing research-level science were requested by the UK public, and the series provided a focal point that changed the public debate on polar climate change. This debate influenced the passage of the UK Antarctic Bill through the Houses of Parliament.
Polar research at SPRI has been made accessible to wider audiences through the Polar Museum, which is unique as Britain's only museum dedicated to the Arctic and Antarctic. The Museum's formal plan has at its core the use of displays to communicate SPRI's research findings to a general, non-specialist audience; for example, showing the public how this research is deepening the understanding of environmental problems such as sea-level rise. A complete redesign in 2009- 10 utilised SPRI research in polar science and humanities to underpin museum displays (which had previously related only to polar exploration) and to project the significance of the rapidly changing polar environment — climatic, social and cultural — to a diverse audience (c. 50,000 in 2012) with international reach. Research is communicated through captioned museum exhibits, interactive screens and audio-guides, talks and tours, and Internet resources. Wide secondary reach includes substantial media coverage in newspapers, TV and radio. The Polar Museum was shortlisted for the Art Fund's prestigious Museum of the Year Award in 2011 and for European Museum of the Year in 2012.
This case study details the impact of current glaciological research at the University of Aberdeen on the Earth's polar ice sheets on practitioners and services in the non-academic science community, specifically the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and European Space Agency (ESA). In addition, the research has informed public understanding of the stability of the polar ice caps under the influence of climate change. The beneficiaries of our research are professional scientists in Environmental and Earth Sciences working at BAS and ESA who have used our findings to constrain computer modelling of ice sheet dynamics and to calibrate and validate measurements of ice sheet mass change. We have been involved in major international collaborative field research on the Antarctic and Greenland Ice Sheets to better define the current basal and surface boundaries of the ice sheets and to improve the understanding of the sensitivity of the ice sheets' boundaries to climate change over a range of timescales.
Since 1994, Professor Charles Sheppard at the University of Warwick, both individually and in collaboration with others, has published key results and observational studies into the coral reefs and islands of the Chagos Archipelago, central Indian Ocean. This is a British Overseas Territory - the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT), the UK's most biodiverse marine environment, comprising five atolls including the largest in the world and ten submerged atolls and banks covering 60,000 sqkm. These studies showed the marine environment there was the least impacted in the Indian Ocean, and the largest undamaged tract of coral reefs remaining in the world. It also has the worlds highest reef fish biomass, highest densities of the huge but endangered coconut crabs, and is the most unpolluted marine environment recorded in the world. Results in 250 papers to date from over 100 collaborators including several from Warwick (PhD students to Professors), provided the scientific basis for the UK Government's declaration in 2010 of the largest strictly no-take Marine Protected Area (MPA) in the world. The MPA exceeds 650,000 sqkm. The intention is to conserve this huge and globally important area in its present condition, for the benefit of the Indian Ocean countries, and to act as a scientific reference site, or baseline, for tropical studies world-wide. This declaration is a major step forward for marine conservation and food security in a region that has undergone massive decline, both in its ecological condition and ability to supply protein for inhabitants of many of the world's poorest countries.
International and national political negotiations and public debates about climate change mitigation policies can only progress with accurate and timely updates about the global carbon budget. Annual carbon updates have been supplied over many years, as a result of our work. The "Global Carbon Project" (GCP) has become the definitive source on carbon budgets for political and policy processes dealing with climate change mitigation and the GCP draws heavily on the School's work on the ocean carbon cycle, including ocean iron fertilisation, and its relevance to the contemporary global carbon budget. This is evidenced by its citation and influence on national (e.g. UK, Germany, Australia, USA, Sweden and Canada) and international (e.g. UN Framework Convention on Climate Change) deliberations.
The Arctic is undergoing faster rates of climate change than most other regions of the world, with major global consequences. Since the 1990s, Professor Callaghan and co-workers at Sheffield have been at the forefront of determining climate change impacts on Arctic ecosystems. This research has directly led to, and fed into, invited authorship and major co-ordination roles in the authoritative international synthesis reports on climate change impacts commissioned by the Arctic Council and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Through these reports our findings have been widely communicated to international policymakers, the media and society. Callaghan and colleagues have provided policy advice directly to ministers, ambassadors, climate negotiators, and other leaders through face-to-face meetings and presentations, and influenced policy debates at regional to international levels. They have actively engaged in knowledge- exchange activities with Arctic indigenous societies, which are improving those societies' strategies for adaptation to climate change. Through public lectures, the media and authorship of a commissioned textbook, the Sheffield research findings have increased public understanding and influenced the A-level Geography curriculum.
Deep sea tailings placement (DSTP) techniques have been pioneered in Papua New Guinea (PNG): a mining reliant economy in a seismically active region, facing major environmental challenges in the safe handling and storage of mine tailings on land. Dr Shimmield's team researched impacts of DSTP on the marine environment specifically to inform and develop guidelines for the use of DSTP to reduce environmental impact, thereby lowering risk and increasing private sector investment. Guidelines have been established as regulation by the PNG Government providing reassurance to private investors, facilitating an increase in mining exports to 60% of total export (2010).
In 2012, cod stocks in the North Sea were assessed as having recovered almost to a level at which their viability is considered to be safe. This recovery followed 3 decades of progressive depletion to only 50% of the safety threshold of abundance. Achieving this recovery required the EU to abandon an earlier `closed area' policy banning fishing in selected areas of the North Sea, and instead enforce drastic cuts in overall activity on national fishing fleets. The policy change was prompted in part by predictions from mathematical modelling of cod populations by researchers at Strathclyde, showing that the `closed area' policy was unlikely to be an effective strategy for recovery. The recovery has so far restored £17 million in annual value to the fishery.