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The drought of 2018 raised the profile of droughts in Scotland, with broad coverage of impacts. Future occurrence and magnitude of droughts are predicted to increase, with periods previously only occurring once every 40 years happening once every 20 years by 2050. Recent work by NatureScot found increases in extreme droughts across Scotland with the highest likelihood in eastern Scotland including Grampian and Caithness. However, these spatial patterns do not always map to surface water and groundwater vulnerabilities.

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a biological emerging contaminant (EC) with the potential to have significant consequences. ECs, such as pharmaceuticals, personal care products (PPCPs) and microplastics have been detected in surface and ground waters, sewage effluent and at trace concentrations in drinking waters and river sediment. There are data gaps in baseline information on pharmaceuticals in the water environment in Scotland in 18 local authority areas and a bias towards effluents. ECs have the potential to cause both ecotoxicological effects and impacts on human health, therefore their prevalence is of particular concern concerning drinking water sources. Microplastics threaten biodiversity, ecosystem services and potentially human health, yet minimal data pertain to their detection in Scottish freshwaters.

While the impacts of future changes on water quality in Scotland represent a major knowledge gap, water quality modelling frequently suffers from a lack of available data at a high-enough spatial and temporal resolution as well as high uncertainty. Therefore, novel monitoring and modelling approaches are urgently needed to address these challenges. Monthly data typically available from national regulatory water quality monitoring is at risk of underestimating true pollutant concentrations and loads, making it difficult to inform cost-effective targeting of pollution mitigation measures. Wide deployment of high-temporal resolution monitoring instruments continues to be hindered by high cost and there is an urgent need for innovative techniques for cheaper, reliable high-resolution field assessment to understand pollutant sources, pathways, and responses to mitigation measures.

While modelling facilitates an understanding of both current drivers and future risks to the water environment, the application of models to AMR is rare and hindered by a lack of data, limited mechanistic understanding and a failure to consider the role of environmental factors on transmission. The temporal and spatial dynamics of Antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) in catchment systems is likely to be important in influencing risk levels across seasons and scales but is not well represented in models to date. Further, while new ECs appear every year, for many we do not have sufficient monitoring data or knowledge to characterise their behaviour in the environment.

The key drivers of this research are the needs of policymakers and managers to:

• Have tools to predict where and when drought may occur in Scotland.
• Understand where vulnerabilities to drought lie in our environment, economy and society.
• Understand future changes in water quality in Scottish catchments; what drivers of change are and how this impacts ecosystem services and water users.
• Improve and monitor rural drinking water quality and increase awareness of potential health risks from their water supplies.

The agricultural sector is in a period of rapid change; some of which include the tendency towards larger farms, with more animals but fewer people to care for these animals. This can lead to increased difficulties in the effective detection of welfare issues. Options that could help are to use methods to help stockkeepers decide where intervention is required i.e., data-driven decisions. This information can originate from a variety of sources, for example, new tools, such as wearable sensors or strategic use of diagnostics. The approach is known as precision livestock farming (PLF) which is a farming method where equipment, data or software is used which allows the use of information at an individual level for targeting decisions, inputs, and treatments more precisely. These approaches have been embraced by sectors such as dairy cattle and poultry, with a variety of them currently used on commercial farms e.g., sensors to identify the onset of calving and lameness detection, but little uptake or development of appropriate systems have been conducted for sheep.

As well as data collection at an individual level, significant improvements in animal welfare, particularly in extensively managed sheep-rearing systems, can also be achieved through an overall reduction in disease burden. One example of this type of approach is the use of diagnostic tests to target the control of specific diseases in local or regional settings. However, there are few practical on-farm applications of these tools for use in sheep, but there are exciting opportunities to develop innovative tools to support farming systems to promote positive welfare.

PLF tools can be used to improve the assessment of welfare issues: validation/evaluation of sensor-based tools to assess welfare in grazing animals, for the early detection of negative welfare-inducing diseases such as sheep scab and mastitis, and the strategic use of a diagnostic test to improve welfare through early detection of disease. These tools could provide livestock keepers with non-labour-intensive options to monitor the welfare of their animals. Implementation of these tools will allow the promotion of positive welfare, improved sustainable farming practices and climate change mitigation through the early detection of welfare issues and optimised, effective and early treatment of disease, which will reduce chemical substance use in farming.

Land reform in Scotland has been driven by key periods of land access claims and dispossession, and discussions of the 'land question' remain sensitive. The Scottish Government has been pursuing land reform over the past 20 years to modernize property law, fiscal systems, and increase diversity of landownership types and scale, improve accountability and transparency, and rebalance rights of private landownership with responsibility.

Land reform in Scotland addresses the adverse effects of concentrated private landownership, promote a wider variety of landownership types with larger scale landholdings, enhance accountability and transparency in landownership, and restore balance between the rights of private landownership and corresponding responsibilities.

With the aim of becoming a net-zero society by 2045, there is a growing need for significant changes in land use and management practices, including woodland expansion and restoration of peatlands as carbon sinks. Consequently, there has been a recent increase in interest from companies and individuals seeking to purchase land in Scotland to benefit from its 'offsetting' potential.

Water utility companies have a legal regulatory requirement to test their drinking water for the presence of Cryptosporidium oocysts and only test their water supply for the presence of Giardia cysts when there is a potential outbreak or contamination. Cryptosporidiosis and Giardiasis are the most diagnosed parasitic diseases in humans in Scotland and drinking water has been implicated in their transmission. However, they do not test for Toxoplasma oocysts within their water supply. Previous research has detected Toxoplasma gondii DNA in some Scottish public water supplies. Humans can become infected with Toxoplasma by ingesting oocysts in water contaminated with infected cat faeces. Unlike Cryptosporidium and Giardia, Toxoplasma was not previously considered to be a significant waterborne pathogen; however, following the occurrence of large human outbreaks, linked to Toxoplasma oocyst contamination of water supplies, it has emerged as an important transmission route.

The screening protocols used by the water utility companies are:

• Labour intensive
• Time-consuming
• Involve microscopy, which requires high levels of expertise
• Prone to operator error due to subjectivity of oocyst identification during microscopy, especially in dirty water samples
• Time-limited as microscopy operators are limited by a maximum of 4 hrs per day due to Health and Safety guidance
• There are currently no commercial and validated tests for the detection of Toxoplasma oocysts in water samples
• Microscopy cannot distinguish between human infectious/non-infectious species/assemblages of parasite
• Standard fluorescent microscopy cannot distinguish between live and dead parasite oocysts/cysts

Transformational change is needed now to mitigate climate and biodiversity emergencies and to adapt to current and future water-related environmental pressures. Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) have been promoted to help address these emergencies and support Scotland’s Green Recovery. NBS are defined as “solutions to societal challenges that are inspired and supported by nature”. NBS are central to global debates about sustainable natural resource management. They have been identified as one solution to many water-related environmental pressures and are being considered more by many policy, industry, and practice sectors. However, the widespread rollout of NBS is slow to address the pressing emergencies and mitigate water-related pressure. Scientific evidence and guidance are needed to support implementation through the Scottish Government’s ‘Green Recovery.’

Coupled with this, greater focus must be given so that these solutions can provide many more ecosystem services and there are potential ways to maximise these benefits further in managed landscapes. We must also assess the conditions of some of our core land units and look at ways to protect these systems. Also, consideration of the wider benefits, how to value these and promote these to catchment planners, industry, and practice is required. However, getting beyond small-scale pilots and isolated best practices rarely occurs; we need to explore how to work at scales and across sectors to deliver NBS that make a significant contribution to meeting society’s needs.

Protecting and enhancing soil health - particularly in peatlands given that they store nearly 50% of all Scotland’s soil carbon - is key to reaching Scotland’s net zero targets by 2045. Peatland health, or condition, is dependent on physical, hydrological, and ecological factors that influence each other in various self-regulating feedbacks to produce resilience to climate changes over millennial timescales.

Much of Scotland’s peatland area has been damaged to such a degree that this self-regulation no longer functions. In net terms, the degraded peatlands lose so much carbon that they completely offset the entire forest carbon sink in Scotland as well as having lost other vital ecosystem functions, such as water filtration and storage. The realisation of the scale of this issue has led to the inclusion of peatland restoration targets (250,000 hectares restored by 2030). As the majority of Scotland’s approximately 2.4 million hectares of peat is degraded, targeting the most cost-effective sites for restoration is necessary. Wider than just restoration issues, we also still do not have clear estimates of how degraded our peatlands are or how to cost-effectively monitor the overall health or condition of our 2.4 million hectares of peatland.

The increasing number of companies and organizations that are committing to reducing their carbon emissions is leading to a greater demand for investment in restoring woodland habitats. This is because these habitats can help absorb carbon and offset the emissions that organizations still produce. However, it's not always easy or without risk to get the most carbon-absorbing benefits from restoring woodland in Scotland. There needs to be a better understanding of how to do this in a way that also brings other benefits to society and reduces the risk of failure.

Climate change will also affect the ability of trees to absorb carbon, and different restoration investors may have different goals and levels of uncertainty, which can impact the outcome of these projects. It's important to carefully consider these factors and assess any potential unintended consequences.

In Scotland, a common land management practice is called "muirburn," which involves prescribed burning on moorlands where grouse shooting is a major land use. However, there is still a lot of debate and uncertainty around the effects of muirburn on biodiversity and how it interacts with wildfires.

Scotland's Atlantic Oakwoods are an important habitat for a variety of species, but there is limited knowledge about how these ecosystems work and how to best protect and restore them. This includes a lack of understanding of the diversity of the soil biota, which is critical for developing effective management strategies.

The government is taking steps to reverse the loss of biodiversity by encouraging more environmentally friendly land use practices and habitat restoration. However, to be effective, it's important to know where to focus these efforts and how to measure the success of these efforts.

Natural capital (NC) refers to a concept or framing of the stocks and flows of services that nature provides to society. NC underpins all aspects of Human life and our economies through the delivery of ecosystem services (ES), often described as our ‘life support systems’. Biodiversity, as a key set of NC assets, is essential to enable the functional ability of ecosystems to provide services. However, NC is increasingly at risk from climate change, which is impacting biodiversity and ecosystem functions, jeopardising the supply of ES and reducing the potential for Nature-based Solutions (NBS) for mitigation and adaptation. The differentiated impacts of climate change on the many types of assets that make up Scotland’s Natural Capital is likely to determine how species, ecosystems and landscapes function and provide ES. Of particular concern is that the potential for ecosystems to mitigate climate change is reduced, or worse, change means assets increase greenhouse gas emissions.

To avoid this damaging feedback loop and improve our management and use of NC, we must increase our understanding of what the impacts of climate change are likely to be on NC assets, and how ES are affected. This is needed to improve planning and decision-making to protect and enhance ecosystems and maintain ES to continue supporting societal economic and well-being development. Detailed information is needed to help realise the potential for NC to enable Scotland to achieve net-zero emissions with the help of NBS.

The Scottish Government (SG) wants to increase the use of natural capital (NC) to bring more economic and social benefits. This goal is included in policies like the Land Use Strategy (2021) and Scotland's Forestry Strategy (2019). Climate change and biodiversity crises are leading to changes in economic priorities, with NC at the centre of a green recovery. The Dasgupta Report stated there is a lack of understanding of the value of nature, causing overuse of natural resources. The report suggests using NC accounting to create a more accurate measure of economic progress, one that takes into account the benefits of investing in natural assets.

Scotland is also putting a lot of focus on conservation finance, including the goal to invest £1 billion in nature-based solutions. This is part of the plan to reduce carbon emissions, improve resilience to climate change, and bring economic and social benefits to people and businesses. SG's policies aim to build strong communities, fight social exclusion, and promote healthy lifestyles, and NC valuation can help make decisions about resource use and management.

NC accounting provides valuable information for decision making and policy appraisal. It can estimate the contribution of ecosystem services (ES) to income and well-being, provide evidence of the benefits of ES, and guide decisions about payments for ES. Valuation can also help resolve conflicts between different interests and guide decisions to prevent damages that harm society.

Scotland has a variety of NC measurement tools and programs, including Scottish NC Accounts and the Asset Index, which provide a high-level view of the value and state of NC. The NC Pilot Program is a series of projects to test NC accounting methods and approaches to inform SG's policies. The Regional Land Use Partnerships, which involve government, communities, landowners, and other stakeholders, aim to facilitate NC-led collaborations at the regional level. However, NC approaches can face challenges from conflicting values among different groups of stakeholders. Currently, NC is seen as the value of the expected future flows of ES, considering the history of NC use or extraction, which can sometimes lead to conflicts between policies targeting different ES.