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Journal & Conference Papers

Links to papers from the Landscape Decisions network and from our constituent project teams.

2023

Using a multi-lens framework for landscape decisions, published in People and Nature, May 2023

In this paper, the authors recognise that a suite of complementary and multi-dimensional approaches are used in practice to inform and evaluate land use decisions. They call these approaches ‘lenses’ because they each provide a different perspective on the same problem. The four lenses are (i) power and market gain, (ii) ecosystem services, (iii) place-based identity and (iv) ecocentric. Each brings a different set of evidence and viewpoints (narrative, qualitative and experiential, as well as quantitative metrics such as monetary) to the decision-making process and can potentially reveal problems and solutions that others do not.

Model ensembles of ecosystem services fill global certainty and capacity gaps, produced by the Ensembles project team and published in Science Advances, Volume 9, April 2023

Sustaining ecosystem services (ES) critical to human well-being is hindered by many practitioners lacking access to ES models (“the capacity gap”) or knowledge of the accuracy of available models (“the certainty gap”), especially in the world’s poorer regions. This research developed ensembles of multiple models at an unprecedented global scale for five ES of high policy relevance. Ensembles were 2 to 14% more accurate than individual models. Ensemble accuracy was not correlated with proxies for research capacity, indicating that accuracy is distributed equitably across the globe and that countries less able to research ES suffer no accuracy penalty.

2022

Extent, accuracy and repeatability of bare sand and vegetation cover in dunes mapped from aerial imagery is highly variable, produced by the Landscape-scale environmental drivers of coastal dune mobility project team and published in Aeolian Research, Volume 56, June 2022

This work was funded through the UK Natural Environment Research Council grant NE/T00410X/1. The global positioning system used in the study was funded by the Royal Society grant RG170467.

Special Issue: Designing for Reimagined Communities, produced by the Design Innovation and Land-Assets project team and published in CoDesign, Volume 18, March 2022

Within place-based design research, the concept of community has become an increasingly important reference point, particularly in relation to the areas of co-design and participatory design. This Special Issue ‘Designing for Reimagined Communities’ developed outwards from a UK Arts and Humanities Research Council funded programme Design Innovation & Land-Assets: Towards new communities. The Special Issue was guest edited by Lynn-Sayers McHattie and Brian Dixon.

Reducing uncertainty in ecosystem service modelling through weighted ensembles, produced by the EnsemblES project team and published in Ecosystem Services, Volume 53, February 2022

This work took place under the EnsemblES project – Using ensemble techniques to capture the accuracy and sensitivity of ecosystem service models (NE/T00391X/1). Land Cover Map 2015 is under UKCEH licence 1403. The authors acknowledge the help of Kevin Watts for guiding them through the Forest Research data and John Redhead for providing InVEST biophysical tables. They also thank the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments on the manuscript.

Incorporating environmental variability in a spatially-explicit individual-based model of European sea bass, produced by the Quantifying uncertainty in the predictions of complex process-based models project team and published in Ecological Modelling, Volume 466, 21 January 2022

Authors were supported as follows; JW was funded by a NERC PhD studentship [grant number NE/L002566/1] with CASE sponsorship from CEFAS, GV and RE are funded by NERC (NE/T00973X/1) and RD is funded by EPSRC (grant nos. EP/V025899/1, EP/T017112/1) and NERC (grant no. NE/T00973X/1), RMS was part funded by NERC(NE/T004010/1). The authors also thank the Scientific Computing Research Technology Platform (SCRTP) at the University of Warwick for the computing resource.

Maintaining, Enhancing and Restoring the Peatlands of Wales: Unearthing the Challenges of Law and Sustainable Land Management, produced by the Welsh Peatlands Evidence project team and published in the Journal of Environmental Law, 8 January 2022

The authors would like to extend their thanks to Paul Sinnadurai, Senior Ecologist, Brecon Beacons National Park Authority and David Ashford and Tara Frogatt at Dwr Cymru for their help with this article. They would also like to thank members of the Public Law Discussion Group at the School of Law, Swansea University, and the anonymous reviewers for their comments. However, they also take full responsibility for any errors or omissions in this article. The authors would also like to acknowledge the funding that J.W. has received from the UKRI Landscape Decisions Fellowship Programme NE/V007920/1 (JW). VJs contribution was enabled by the School of Law, Swansea University.

2021

Using remote sensors to predict soil properties: Radiometry and peat depth in Dartmoor, UK, produced by the Issues of Uncertainty and Scale in Derived Products project team and published in Geoderma, Volume 403, 1 December 2021, 115232

This research was funded by the NERC project NE/T004169/1 as part of the Landscapes Decisions Programme and by EPSRC as part of the Senior Fellowship in the Role of Digital Technology in Understanding, Mitigating and Adapting to Environmental Change grant no: EP/P002285/1. This paper is published with the permission of the Executive Director, BGS. The author is grateful to David Beamish (BGS), Christoph Kratz (Natural England) and Dylan Young (Leeds University) for informative discussions.

An Rshiny app for modelling environmental DNA data: accounting for false positive and false negative observation error, produced by the Integrating new statistical frameworks into eDNA survey and analysis at the landscape scale project team and published in Ecography, Volume 44, Issue 12, 20 October 2021

This paper introduces an RShiny app for modelling single-species eDNA data (under IK1). The authors thank Natural England for collecting the data and making them available in an open access format. They also thank Dr Diana Cole for useful insights about the issue of model identifiability and Dr Pete Brotherton for advice and comments. This work was funded by NERC project NE/T010045/1 ‘Integrating new statistical frameworks into eDNA survey and analysis at the landscape scale’.

The imagination and public participation: a Deweyan perspective on the potential of design innovation and participatory design in policy-making, produced by the Design Innovation and Land-Assets project team and published in CoDesign, 16 September 2021

This article is part of a forthcoming Special Issue on Reimagined Communities. The authors would like to extend heartfelt thanks to Prof. Janet McDonnell for the editorial support she gave this article, as well as the Special Issue more broadly.

Walking, and Knowing the Past: Antiquaries, Pedestrianism and Historical Practice in Modern Britain, produced by Paul Readman of the Changing landscapes, changing lives project team and published in History, Volume 107, Issue 374, 14 September 2021

The author thanks Martha Vandrei, Arthur Burns, Jeremy Burchardt, Matthew Kelly, Marion Thain, Nicola Whyte and the two anonymous reviewers. The research presented here draws on work undertaken as part of the author’s involvement in the AHRC research network, ‘Changing Landscapes, Changing Lives’ (AH/T006110/1); he is grateful to the AHRC for their support.

When Loss is More: From Managed Decline to Adaptive Release, produced by the Landscape Futures and the Challenge of Change project team and published in The Historic Environment: Policy & Practice, Volume 12, Issue 3-4, 9 September 2021

Preparation of this paper was made possible by an Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Impact and Engagement Follow-on grant in the Landscape Decisions Programme (AH/T012196/1). The authors would like to thank all of the people who have shared their perspectives with the teams and contributed to the ideas presented here, particularly the participants in the May 2021 Landscape Futures workshop, with a special thanks to Kate Guest, Imogen Sambrook, Simon Robertshaw and Caitlin Kight.

Emulation of high-resolution land surface models with sparse Gaussian processes with application to JULES, produced by the JEM project team and published in Geoscientific Model Development, 12 August 2021

This work was supported by the Natural Environment Research Council [NE/T004177/1].

Identification of typical eco-hydrological behaviours using InSAR allows landscape-scale mapping of peatland condition, produced by the StAMP project team and published in Earth Surface Dynamics, 27 July 2021

A revised version of this preprint is currently under review for the journal ESurf. The authors would like to thank members of the following organizations who provided access to sites for surveys or insight and local knowledge about past and present management over the study area: NatureScot Peatland ACTION, Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, Plantlife Scotland, Forestry and Land Scotland, Scottish Forestry, Welbeck Estate and Shurrery Estate. David Gee and Ahmed Athab for their assistance with the APSIS InSAR data output. “National Soil Map of Scotland” copyright and database right The James Hutton Institute v.1_4. Used with the permission of the James Hutton Institute. All rights reserved. Any public sector information contained in these data is licensed under the Open Government License v.2.0. R.A. and C.M are funded by a Leverhulme Leadership Award (1466NS) and D.J.L, R.A. and C.M. with a NERC InSAR TOPS NE/P014100/1.

Ensuring that offsets and other internationally transferred mitigation outcomes contribute effectively to limiting global warming, produced by the A practical tool and robust framework for evaluating greenhouse gas emissions from land-based activities project team and published in Environmental Research Letters, Volume 16, Issue 7, 23 June 2021

K T and M R A acknowledge support from the Integrated Research Program for Advancing Climate Models (TOUGOU Program), the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology, Japan; M R A and M C were additionally supported by the FORCeS and 4C H2020 projects under Grant Agreement Numbers 821205 and 821003 and A M by the Institut d’Etudes Avancées de Nantes, 5, allée Jacques Berque, 44000 Nantes, France. J L acknowledges funding from the Wellcome Trust, Our Planet Our Health (Livestock, Environment and People—LEAP), award number 205212/Z/16/Z. M A S, M C and M R A acknowledge support from the Natural Environment Research Council award number NE/T004053/1 and the Oxford Martin Programme on Climate Pollutants. K T also benefited from State assistance managed by the National Research Agency in France under the ‘Programme d’Investissements d’Avenir’ under the reference ‘ANR-19-MPGA-0008’.

Optimising sampling and analysis protocols in environmental DNA studies, produced by the Integrating new statistical frameworks into eDNA survey and analysis at the landscape scale project team and published in Scientific Reports, Volume 11, 2 June 2021

The authors would like to thank Natural England for making the data they collect freely available online. They would like to thank the National Environment Research Council for funding grant number NE/T010045/1 “Integrating new statistical frameworks into eDNA survey and analysis at the landscape scale”. The newt image in Fig. 1 is taken from the Amphibian and Reptile Conservation Trust logo with permission from the CEO Anthony Gent. The Fig. 1 image of DNA is used under licence from pixabay.com. The authors would also like to thank all involved with the peer review process.

Identifying and Mapping Groups of Protected Area Visitors by Environmental Awareness, produced by the ADVANCES project team and published in Land, Volume 10, Issue 6, 27 May 2021

A.S.G. and G.Z. were supported by the Natural Environment Research Council [grant number NE/T002115/1] under the ADVANCES (ADVancing Analysis of Natural Capital in LandscapE DecisionS) project. J.A.M. was supported by Q-Step programme (University of Leeds), which is funded by the Nuffield Foundation, the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), and the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE).

Comparison of the carbon, water, and energy balances of mature stand and clear-fell stages in a British Sitka spruce forest and the impact of the 2018 drought, produced by the PRAFOR project team and published in Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, Volume 306, 14 May 2021

The authors would like to thank the staff of Forestry England (previously Forest Enterprise England) North England Forest District for access to the sites and logistical support and in particular Graham Gill, Forest District Director (retired), and the late Jonathan Farries, beat forest manager. The authors would also like to thank the Technical Service Unit of Forest Research for their support during field work. Finally, they would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their useful comments. The project was funded by the Forestry Commission and partly by the UKRI Natural Environment Research Council GREENHOUSE project.

Further improvement of warming-equivalent emissions calculation, produced by the A practical tool and robust framework for evaluating greenhouse gas emissions from land-based activities project team and published in npj Climate and Atmospheric Science, Volume 4, Issue 19, 19 March 2021

The authors would like to thank A. Reisinger for helpful discussion that contributed to the development of this paper. M.C. acknowledges support from the Oxford Martin Programme on Climate Pollutants. J.L. acknowledges support from The Wellcome Trust, Our Planet Our Health (Livestock, Environment and People—LEAP), award number 205212/Z/16/Z. M.R.A., M.C. and J.L. acknowledge support from Natural Environment Research Council award number NE/T004053/1–A practical tool and robust framework for evaluating greenhouse gas emissions from land-based activities.

Nature provides valuable sanitation services, produced by the EnsemblES project team and published by One Earth, Volume 4, Issue 2, 19 February 2021

This manuscript was prepared as part of the ESRC and ICSSR funded Rurality as a vehicle for Urban Sanitation Transformation (RUST) project (grant ref. ES/R006865/1 ). S.W. was additionally funded by ES/R009279/1 and NE/T00391X/1 . S.W., A.P., and C.W. led data collation, analysis, and manuscript preparation. All authors were involved in theorizing and writing the manuscript. The authors thank the anonymous reviewers, whose comments greatly improved the manuscript.

Reconstructing Spatiotemporal Dynamics in Hydrological State Along Intermittent Rivers, produced by the ASTRID project team and published in Water, Volume 13, Issue 4, 14 February 2021

The authors would like to acknowledge Geoffrey Angell and Rebecca Ross of the Environment Agency (EA) for providing access to data and valuable insights on results, as well as the many EA hydrologists who undertook the surveys of hydrological state. The views expressed within this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of their organisations. This research was funded by the Environment Agency, UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology and Lancaster University.

Further improvement of warming-equivalent emissions calculation, produced by the A practical tool and robust framework for evaluating greenhouse gas emissions from land-based activities project team and published as a preprint at EarthArXiv, 21 January 2021

This paper is a non-peer reviewed preprint submitted to EarthArXiv. It has been submitted to npj Climate and Atmospheric Sciences for peer review.

Uncertainty of modelled bioenergy with carbon capture and storage due to variability of input data, produced by the ADVANCES project team in collaboration with teams outside of the Landscape Decisions Programme cohort. Authored by Anita Shepherd, Mike Martin & Astley Hastings. First published 08 January 2021

Climate and soil effects were tested on BECCS, as part of the UKERC (UK Energy Research Centre) Phase 4 research programme, funded by UK Research and Innovation (EP/S029575/1). Model development was also made possible by ADVENT (ADdressing Valuation of Energy and Nature Together).

2020

Uncovering Environmental Change in the English Lake District: Using Computational Techniques to Trace the Presence and Documentation of Historical Flora, produced by the Revealing Long-Term Change in Vegetation Landscapes project team and published in Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, Volume 36, Issue 3, 15 December 2020

The authors are grateful to Mike Bennett and Dr Beatrice Alex at Edinburgh for their support with the geoparser and the Unlock service. They are also grateful to John Iacona at The Royal Botanical Gardens Kew, for help and guidance in accessing POWO data. Further thanks are due to Prof. Ian Gregory and Dr Patricia Murrieta-Flores for their insight and guidance. The research leading to these findings has received funding from United Kingdom Research and Innovation (UKRI) Strategic Priorities Fund as part of ‘Enriching understanding of natural-cultural heritage in the English Lake District UNESCO World Heritage Site’, and from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), as part of ‘Revealing Long-Term Change in Vegetation Landscapes: The English Lake District and Beyond’ (AH/T006153/1). This work was also supported by the EU-China Research and Innovations Partnership (ECRIP) [2014/348-010], as part of the project Addressing food Security, Environmental stress and Water by promoting multidisciplinary Research EU And China Partnerships in science and business (Sew reap).

Ensembles of ecosystem service models can improve accuracy and indicate uncertainty, produced by the EnsemblES project team and published in Science of The Total Environment Volume 747, 10 December 2020, 141006

This work took place under the ‘WISER: Which Ecosystem Service Models Best Capture the Needs of the Rural Poor?’ project (NE/L001322/1), funded by the UK Ecosystem Services for Poverty Alleviation program (ESPA; www.espa.ac.uk) and ‘EnsemblES – Using ensemble techniques to capture the accuracy and sensitivity of ecosystem service models’ (NE/T00391X/1). JML acknowledges the support of the Spanish Government through María de Maeztu excellence accreditation 2018-2021 (Ref. MDM-2017-0714). We thank three anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments that improved this manuscript.

The associated project dataset available under the terms of the Open Government Licence

Trends in flow intermittence for European rivers, produced by the ASTRID project team and published in Hydrological Sciences Journal, Volume 66, Issue 1, 8 December 2020

This research is part of the COST action CA15113 SMIRES, Science and Management of Intermittent Rivers and Ephemeral Streams https://www.smires.eu/, a short-term scientific mission that has been funded for Agnieszka Rutkowska. Agnieszka Rutkowska was also supported by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Republic of Poland (grant DS 3371). The different data providers are gratefully acknowledged. Some of the station data were retrieved from the Global Runoff Data Centre (56068 Koblenz, Germany) and from the HyMeX programme database. The authors would like to thank two anonymous reviewers, Kendra Kaiser and the Associate Editor, Stephanie Kampf, for their constructive comments.

Aqua temporaria incognita, produced by the ASTRID project team and published in Hydrological Processes, Volume 34, Issue 26, 17 November 2020

The authors thank the SMIRES (Science and Management of Intermittent Rivers & Ephemeral Streams) COST Action CA15113 for facilitating their many discussions on temporary streams, Willy Bertin and Gaela Le Bechec from SR3A and Judy England from the Environment Agency for information on how and why they use the CrowdWater app, and Helena Ramos Ribeiro and Auria Buchs for collecting the data shown in Figure 2.

Local and regional drivers influence how aquatic community diversity, resistance and resilience vary in response to drying, produced by the ASTRID project team and published in Oikos, Volume 129, Issue 12, 28 August 2020

The authors thank the numerous ecologists and hydrologists from the Environment Agency, who collected the data, notably David Leeming, Di Hammond and Geoff Angel. Their dedication to understanding how these streams respond to drying made this study possible. The views expressed within this paper are those of the authors and not necessarily those of their organisations.

Ensemble outputs from Ecosystem Service models for water supply, aboveground carbon storage and use of water, grazing, charcoal and firewood by beneficiaries in sub-Saharan Africa, produced by the EnsemblES project team and published via the NERC Environmental Information Data Centre, 25 June 2020

The work was completed under the ‘EnsemblES – Using ensemble techniques to capture the accuracy and sensitivity of ecosystem service models’ project (NE/T00391X/1) funded by the UKRI Landscape Decisions programme.

Landscape drivers of coastal dune mobility, produced by the Landscape-scale environmental drivers of coastal dune mobility project team and presented at the EGU General Assembly, 8 May 2020

The full programme of the 2020 EGU General Assembly is available here.

Estimating organic surface horizon depth for peat and peaty soils across a Scottish upland catchment using linear mixed models with topographic and geological covariates, produced by the Issues of Uncertainty and Scale in Derived Products project team and published in Soil Use and Management, Volume 37, Issue 3, 23 April 2020

John Holland and Davy McCracken are thanked for guidance on access and discussions at the SRUC site. John Lee and the journal reviewers are thanked for comments that improved this manuscript. This research was partly funded by NERC project NE/T004169/1 as part of the Landscapes Decisions Programme. This paper is published with the permission of the Executive Director, BGS.

Regime shifts occur disproportionately faster in larger ecosystems, produced by the EnsemblES project team and published by Nature Communications, Volume 11, Issue 1, 10 March 2020

G.S.C. and J.A.D. gratefully acknowledge a research studentship and financial support respectively from the Deltas, Vulnerability and Climate Change: Migration and Adaptation (DECCMA) project under the Collaborative Adaptation Research Initiative in Africa and Asia (CARIAA) programme with financial support from the UK Government’s Department for International Development (DFID) and the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Canada (Grant No. 107642-001). The views expressed in this work are those of the creators and do not necessarily represent those of DFID and IDRC or its Boards of Governors. S.W. was funded by UKRI project numbers: NE/L001322/1, NE/T00391X/1, ES/R009279/1 and ES/R006865/1. The authors thank Professor Peter Langdon (University of Southampton) for providing early contributions to the concepts of this paper and Dr Rong Wang (Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology) for preliminary data collection and analysis. They also thank Dr James Dyke (University of Southampton), Professor Felix Eigenbrod (University of Southampton) and Dr Robert Cooke (University of Southampton) for their comments on earlier versions of the paper. They also wish to acknowledge the use of the IRIDIS High Performance Computing Facility, and associated support services at the University of Southampton, in the completion of this work.

Demonstrating GWP*: a means of reporting warming-equivalent emissions that captures the contrasting impacts of short- and longlived climate pollutants, produced by the A practical tool and robust framework for evaluating greenhouse gas emissions from land-based activities project team and published in Environmental Research Letters : ERL, Volume 15, Issue 4, 20 January 2020

JL and RP acknowledge funding from the Wellcome Trust, Our Planet Our Health (Livestock, Environment and PeopleLEAP), award number 205212/Z/16/Z. MA, MC and JL acknowledge support from Natural Environment Research Council award number NE/T004053/1A practical tool and robust framework for evaluating greenhouse gas emissions from land-based activities.

2019

The medieval landscapes of Cardiganshire, produced by the Sacred landscapes of medieval monasteries project team and published as a book chapter in Cardiganshire County History Volume 2: Medieval and Early Modern Cardiganshire, University of Wales Press, 15 October 2019

Attributed to ‘The sacred landscapes of medieval monasteries: an inter-disciplinary study of meaning embedded in space and production’ funded by AHRC.

Improved calculation of warming-equivalent emissions for short-lived climate pollutants, produced by the A practical tool and robust framework for evaluating greenhouse gas emissions from land-based activities project team and published in npj Climate and Atmospheric Science, Volume 2, 4 September 2019

The authors would like to thank A. Reisinger for helpful discussion that contributed to the development of this paper. M.C. acknowledges support from the Oxford Martin Programme on Climate Pollutants. J.L. acknowledges support from The Wellcome Trust, Our Planet Our Health (Livestock, Environment and People—LEAP), award number 205212/Z/16/Z. M.R.A., M.C. and J.L. acknowledge support from Natural Environment Research Council award number NE/T004053/1–A practical tool and robust framework for evaluating greenhouse gas emissions from land-based activities.

Y Filltir Sgwâr: mapping the history of local land in a Welsh heartland, produced by the Sacred landscapes of medieval monasteries project team and published as a book chapter in Living Off the Land: Agriculture in Wales C. 400 and 1600 Ad, Windgather Press, 25 July 2019

Attributed to ‘The sacred landscapes of medieval monasteries: an inter-disciplinary study of meaning embedded in space and production’ funded by AHRC.

Saucepans and Saints? The Sacred and the Mundane in Forest Landscapes, produced by the Sacred landscapes of medieval monasteries project team and published in Landscapes, Volume 19, Issue 1, 5 July 2019

This paper originated in a presentation to the international conference celebrating the 800th anniversary of the Charter of the Forest, organised by the Lincoln Record Society in September 2017. Versions were also given at the spring 2018 conference of the Medieval Settlement Research Group at Canterbury, and elsewhere in seminars related to the development of the AHRC-funded project on ‘Sacred Landscapes’. The authors are grateful to those conference sponsors for their invitations to contribute to their events; and to friends, including especially Professors Emilia Jamroziak, Ann Parry Owen and David Austin, for their help in shaping the paper in its published form. Richard Watts at the Lincolnshire HER and Suzy Blake at the Staffordshire HER gave practical help.

Authority and Conflict at The Cistercian Abbey of Strata Florida, produced by the Sacred landscapes of medieval monasteries project team and published in The Welsh History Review, Volume 29, Issue 3, 1 June 2019

On three occasions between c.1340 and c.1440 it was alleged that the renowned Welsh Cistercian abbey of Strata Florida was attacked and invaded by fellow White Monks. This article explores these incidents in detail for the first time.

Ysbryd Ystrad Fflur (The Spirit of Strata Florida), book produced by the Sacred landscapes of medieval monasteries project team and published by Gwasg Gwynfil, 31 May 2019

Attributed to ‘The sacred landscapes of medieval monasteries: an inter-disciplinary study of meaning embedded in space and production’ funded by AHRC.

A Continental-Scale Validation of Ecosystem Service Models, produced by the EnsemblES project team and published in Ecosystems, Volume 22, Issue 8, 22 April 2019

This work took place under the ‘WISER: Which Ecosystem Service Models Best Capture the Needs of the Rural Poor?’ project (NE/L001322/1), funded by the UK Ecosystem Services for Poverty Alleviation program (ESPA; www.espa.ac.uk). ESPA receives its funding from the UK Department for International Development, the Economic and Social Research Council and the Natural Environment Research Council.

New perspectives on Abbey Cwmhir: a photogrammetric survey, produced by the Sacred landscapes of medieval monasteries project team and published in The Transactions of The Radnorshire Society, Volume 99, January 2019

Attributed to ‘The sacred landscapes of medieval monasteries: an inter-disciplinary study of meaning embedded in space and production’ funded by AHRC.