Adapting and enhanCing the Community Environmental Sensor-Survey network in the UK: ACCESS-UK

Concerns about the environment are more apparent than ever before. Pressures on the land to provide enough food have forced the agricultural sector to maximise their productivity using fertiliser and pesticides. But these measures have an impact on the nation's biodiversity, killing insects and other wildlife. Meanwhile, changes in climate are altering the whole system, with earlier springs, more frequent and severe floods and droughts and the possibility of wildfires. The international agreements to curb climate change mean that more of the land needs to be used for forestry, rewetting peatlands and growing biofuels. The land, water, air system is linked: a solution designed to resolve one of the issues is likely to impact our ability to resolve another. What is needed is a holistic approach to solving these problems, based on an understanding of how the earth-system responds to change. A new approach to building environmental policy is needed based on these holistic solutions, which need to be scientifically robust so that the public will trust both the government and the scientists. This can only be achieved in partnership between government, industry and academia. The ACCESS-UK programme will build the science-policy network to support such a partnership, including not only the underpinning science infrastructures to deliver long-term, large scale data sets of the environment, but also partnerships and training with the academic sector, partnership and data-platforms with the wider environmental community, all brought together with policy user groups to define the outcomes that are needed. The challenges tackled by ACCESS-UK are: to create a science-policy network that includes data and analysis for scientists, industry and policy. to ensure that all players in this larger picture are working together with the best evidence that is available. to communicate with the public and the government about the new cutting-edge nature-based solutions to the urgent issues, so that positive change can be made to save our environment. These challenges will be addressed by bringing the many scientists both in academia and in the government agencies together through a collaborative network. The network will have nodes based on the five Themes identified as critical to resolving the environmental crisis (Climate Extremes, Land Use and Net Zero, Pollution, Biodiversity and Integration) and will define how to increase the sharing of data, of monitoring protocols, of analysis and scientific enquiry. By enabling and collaborating with the academic community, the ACCESS-UK programme will increase the insight into the way that the land-system is changing and how it responds to pressures. To support the academics in their research, both within the programme and externally, ACCESS-UK will invest in new methods to access, analyse and integrate the data. This will include multi-disciplinary science hubs that will bring together new combinations of environmental data. To increase the societal and environmental impact of the programme, the ACCESS-UK collaborative network will include key stakeholders in government agencies as well as industry who will help to evolve the ACCESS-UK programme, ensuring that the underpinning data and science is relevant to the key policy issues. The new data and analysis will be used to provide multi-disciplinary nature based solutions for the several hazards facing us now and into the future will be evidenced by robust science. This will feed into the understanding of the public to increase the trust of science and policy.