Climate and resilience

Climate change is a landscape question. It arrives as drought and flood, as species moving uphill, as coastlines redrawn and growing seasons shifted, and it is answered, or not, in decisions about how land is used, managed and shared.

Research in this theme examines environmental stress, adaptation and ecological transition: how landscapes absorb change, where they reach their limits, and what resilience means for the people who live and work in them. Resilience is a contested word here. Used loosely it means little more than absorbing damage and carrying on; used carefully it raises harder questions about who is expected to adapt, at what cost, and whether some landscapes and livelihoods can be sustained at all. Work in this theme ranges from peatlands and wetlands to coastlines and uplands, and it meets ecology and biodiversity, energy landscapes and landscape justice at almost every point.