Genetic biodiversity is the fuel that drives crop improvement.  However, in major cereal crops, while the traditional method of crop improvement has brought significant yield improvements over time, it has also resulted in a drastic loss of crop genetic biodiversity. 

Spurred in part by Scottish government policies such as the commitment to reach Net Zero by 2045, there has been an increase in investment in land for natural capital purposes in Scotland.

Biodiversity is the variety of life on earth and is important to most aspects of our lives.

Microbes play a wide variety of essential roles in keeping our guts healthy and in supporting food and agriculture production. Conversely, some microbial populations can cause serious disease, as foodborne pathogens or infectious agents of food-producing animals and crops.

Plant pests and pathogens can have a devastating impact not only on plant hosts but also the wider biodiversity that use the infected plant (e.g., for food, breeding and shelter).

The Tarland Burn Catchment (~70 km2) has been studied since the year 2000 making it one of the longest running comprehensive catchment management case studies in the UK.

Increasingly trees are being promoted as a means to increase carbon storage and hence off-set climate change.

Healthy, intact floodplains play an important role in mitigating extremes of water availability (droughts and floods) expected under climate change. Compared to other ecosystems, intact floodplains also support a disproportionately high biodiversity.

The climate emergency presents a double challenge for public bodies as they reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and learn to adapt to the already changing climate.

Streams and rivers in farmland areas often have a degraded morphology due to straightening and run-off pollution (inputs of fine sediment, < 2 mm particle size diameter).

A SEFARI Gateway-funded Specialist Advisory Group brought together a broad range of expertise across key industry stakeholders, Government Policy Leads and relevant SEFARI researchers to discuss livestock health and greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), to prioritise health conditions that have the greatest impact on emis

The importance of ecosystems and biodiversity to human well-being is now well established as they provide benefits such as timber, pollination and coastal protection. 

The Scottish Government has committed to legally binding targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net-zero by 2045. This will require a reduction across all sectors of the economy.

Scotland has ambitious strategies for biodiversity protection and climate action with the intention of achieving a greener, fairer and just future.

Combining local, contextualised knowledge with generalised, scientific knowledge is seen as best practice in decision making for biodiversity management. However, there is the potential for conflict if these two knowledges do not concur.

Soil biodiversity is critical to ecosystem functioning, but our understanding of the richness and distribution of soil organisms lags far behind that of biodiversity above ground.

The way we manage land and plan land-use change plays an integral role in the efforts for meeting climatic targets and for mitigating and adapting to climate change impacts.

Nature-based Solutions (NbS) have been defined many times, but these definitions can be summarised as “solutions to societal challenges that are inspired and supported by nature”.

The alpine zone supports some of Scotland’s most natural habitats. Complex topography interacts with snow cover and climate to create gradients in water availability and temperature, resulting in a mosaic of plant communities variously dominated by dwarf-shrubs, grasses, or mosses.

Potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) is one of the world's most economically important food crops and holds major significance for future food security.