Centre for Integrated Research in the Rural Environment
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for more information visit: www.cirre.ac.uk
The Centre for Integrated Research in the Rural Environment brings together expertise to create eff ective mass for innovative research of the highest quality that is integrated across disciplines to provide evidence that underpins the key decisions for the sustainability of the rural environment; in Wales, in the UK and, through collaboration, throughout the world.
The rural environment is under threat world-wide; from environmental change and from multiple demands on the land. Wales provides a microcosm of these pressures; in the Wales Spatial Plan, the Welsh Assembly Government has set out environmental objectives including managing the environment for its distinctive characteristics, so that it contributes to sustainable development, including maintaining soil carbon, reducing contamination, managing diffuse pollution sources to water, protecting landscapes and enhancing habitats, and adapting the land-based economy to focus on high value-added products, and links with tourism and recreation.
Strategic Objectives
- To improve multifunctional analysis of land use, emphasising the functional linkage between production (food, fibre and phyto-chemicals) and ecosystem services (biodiversity, water and air quality, regulation of water flow and control of pathogen populations and recreational & leisure usage)
- To better understand the ecology of managed landscapes using genomics, proteomics and metabolomics, and new approaches to ecological and systems modelling
- To work closely with the Centre for Catchment and Coastal Research to inform decisionmaking for sustainable land use and the sustainability of water resources, river systems and the coast
- To understand the impact of diff erent forms of land use on the sustainability and resilience of ecosystems, and that consequences of perturbations in these ecosystems on carbon, and nutrient cycling
Find out more: http://www.cirre.ac.uk/