Urban green infrastructure (UGI) and Nature-based Solutions (NbS) are terms for sustainable solutions to managing urban flood risk that offer substantial co-benefits (i.e. pollution control, public amenity value and ‘eco-wilding’ biodiversity benefits). However, a lack of accepted, standardised testing methodologies for these hybridised solutions makes it difficult to determine the effectiveness of individual GI features or draw comparisons between different systems. Ensuring maximum dual-functionality of soil retention (flood prevention) and water filtration (water quality) benefits will require developing these testing methods both in-field and within a laboratory setting. Further, the ecological stressors (i.e. influence of wildlife, flora and fauna as ecosystem engineers and the influence of plants and roots on water dynamics) should be considered alongside hydrological testing.

This PhD project will address this research gap by collecting, analysing and interpreting field-sampled and -monitored water quantity and quality parameters to determine multi-benefit, holistic system performance, and link this into wider biodiversity assessments of urban wetland systems. This will be combined with citizen science methodologies to underpin hydroclimatic understandings of GI ‘performance’.

PhD Student – Elise Cheng



“My PhD research relates to the need for flood mitigation in urban cities using Nature-based Solutions and Green Infrastructure. I will be focusing on analysing rain garden behaviour during extreme flood events through constructing a portable rainfall simulator. Flooding impacts infrastructure, society and ecosystems more so in a negative manner, by restoring or replicating natural environments will have the goal of slowing the flow of water movements and reducing the severity of pluvial flooding. My overarching aim is as follows: Investigating the behaviour and placement of SuDS in the central belt of Scotland through conducting in-situ field testing and desk studies. Following this aim covers the areas of knowledge gaps in current literature and contribute to the ongoing research that holds a high impact in urban cities.”

Wet woodlands are valuable and diverse habitats that can play an important role in landscape scale nature recovery, the restoration of hydrological functions, and terrestrial carbon storage. However, wet woodlands are often rare and highly fragmented habitats in the UK due to historic woodland clearance, intensive management, and the drainage of catchments for agricultural or forestry purposes. These habitats are under stress from climate change and chronic nutrient deposition, and thus the unique biodiversity found there could be compromised.

This project will work alongside conservation bodies to understand how we can quantify biodiversity and functioning in these ecosystems, and work at a unique new lagg habitat management project in South Cumbria to develop new tools to manage wet woodlands. The project team is supervised by experienced field ecologists with a track-record in wetland and woodland ecosystem science, as well as the wider team including conservation evidence and practice officers and regional managers.

PhD Student – Lucy Stewart

Freshwater systems are amongst the most threatened on Earth and are predicted to lose 80 % of their biodiversity as a result of multiple stressors by 2050. Mini-wetlands – including ponds, pools, wet woodland, marsh – are amongst the most highly threatened globally. These important and unique ecosystems support exceptionally high biodiversity; however, 30-50 % of wetland biota are estimated to be threatened. They are one of the most important habitats for freshwater molluscs which are experiencing severe declines on a global scale due to anthropogenic activity.

The supervisory team comprise expertise across multiple stressor science, ecotoxicology, analytics and water policy. This scientific topic is extremely important for protecting biodiversity and is a dynamic and rapidly advancing area of study.

PhD Student – Doyinsola Suliat Mustapha



“Hey there! I’m Doyin, and I’m excited to be part of the ECOWILD CDT programme. I’m based in HWU and my PhD is looking at how combinations of environmental stressors impact freshwater snails living in mini-wetlands. These ecosystems, though small, support exceptional biodiversity but are increasingly threatened by human activities. Through a combination of fieldwork, laboratory experiments, and analytical techniques, my project aims to understand how multiple stressors interact and what this means for the health, survival, and conservation of freshwater wetland species.”

As beavers engineer new wetlands, potential stressors like temperature, eutrophication, and invasive species intersect with alterations to the processes that shape riparian habitats. This study aims to uncover the most relevant stressors in beaver-created wetlands, evaluating their implications for ecosystem health, particularly on indicator species like pearl mussels and salmonids. By identifying circumstances where beaver activity may conflict with conservation goals, the project guides decisions on licensing and management. Employing cutting-edge eDNA metabarcoding and field methods, this research analyses community diversity, species abundance, and stressor quantification using multi-stressor theory.

PhD Student – Megan Boffin

Intertidal supra-littoral wetland ecosystems are defined by extremely dynamic and variable environmental conditions driven by tidal, climate, and terrestrial input cycles. They are increasingly exposed to multiple human-induced stressors of global climate change and pollution. In this project, we will use the rockpool copepod Tigriopus brevicornus as a laboratory model to examine the short and long term impacts of such stressors and the ways in which extreme intertidal species might adapt under future climate change scenarios. Tigriopus copepods are adapted to survive in high intertidal pools, which undergo extreme fluctuations in environmental conditions, principally salinity, temperature, oxygen, and pH, over tidal, semilunar (spring/neap) and seasonal cycles. Tigriopus are emerging as an ideal laboratory model to study the mechanistic basis of zooplankton response and adaptation to environmental variation and local pollutants. This project brings together expert supervisors in zooplankton ecology, behaviour, chronobiology, genetics, genomics, and applied conservation to shed light on mechanisms of stress response and long-term implications of transgenerational adaptation to multiple stressors in these extremophiles.

PhD Student – Nele Thomsen



“My interests are in extreme environments, biological adaptations, and ecotoxicology. I am particularly fascinated by copepods and how they deal with climate change related stress in a complex environment. I apply multilevel analysis methods to understand how these organisms will cope on a genetic and wider biological level in future climate conditions. For my PhD project, our main goals are to assess general sensitivities of the rockpool copepod Tigriopus brevicornis to common environmental stressors in a multistress scenario, understand the underlying mechanisms that might improve their resilience, and investigate the transgenerational impact of selected multistressors on the genome, genetic functioning, and general fitness of T. brevicornis.”

The Flow Country in northern Scotland is an internationally important peatland supporting an incredibly diverse waterbird community, proposed as the world’s first peatland world heritage site, yet many breeding bird species are declining there. This project investigates the multiple stressors and drivers of change in Flow Country waterbird population trends to identify causes and enable successful conservation management. The supervisory team has a range of international expertise, including wetland, predator and waterbird ecology, and data science.

PhD Student – Lucy Mortlock

This project aims to assess the multiple stressor implications of pollution, climate change and landscape management on floodplain functioning including water hydrology, pollutant and sediment retention, carbon storage, greenhouse gas emissions, and biodiversity. A supervisory team at the forefront of ecosystem research on plants, water and soils, soil fauna, contaminants, carbon sequestration and greenhouse gas fluxes is in support.

UK floodplains are crucial for healthy riverine ecosystems, but their functionality has been degraded by channel manipulation, agricultural use and pollution. Climate change may additionally affect floodplain performance through changes in flooding dynamics and conditions (e.g. more frequent summer floods), but this is less well studied. As these multiple stressors will occur simultaneously, we also urgently need to know their combined impacts. UK floodplains have been under pressure from human activity and can be hotspots for pollutant input through contaminated sediment deposition. Simultaneously, floodplain functions may also be affected by climate change.

This cutting-edge study will therefore provide critical evidence on how these multiple stressors, single and in combination, will impact pollutant and sediment retention, carbon storage, greenhouse gas emissions and biodiversity in floodplains to inform management, restoration and climate change mitigation.

PhD Student – Mahmuda Islam



“My PhD project involves understanding the impacts of flooding and potentially toxic elements on soil biogeochemical cycling, including greenhouse gas cycling. Soil microbes play a crucial role in greenhouse gas cycling. I am interested in applying an interdisciplinary approach that merges soil microbial ecology with redox chemistry to explore how microbes adapt or respond to multiple stressors (e.g., chemical pollution and flooding) and how these interactions ultimately influence greenhouse gas dynamics. I hope the findings of this study will contribute to the strategies to mitigate climate change and restore floodplains.”

Over half the world’s wetlands occur in the tropics, with multitudes of people and species relying on these resources, yet there is little research about how these wetlands can be conserved for biodiversity whilst delivering vital ecosystem services. This collaborative project will build a holistic and comprehensive picture of the multiple stressors affecting the wetlands of the Cambodian Lower Mekong Delta and the socio-economic and policy drivers.

The student will complete fieldwork in Cambodia in collaboration with the WWT Cambodian team, the Cambodian Development Resource Institute and other partners in Cambodia. A mixed-method and multidisciplinary approach, combining qualitative and quantitative methods, will be used to gather and map information. The student will develop expertise and skills in ecological quality analysis, wetland ecology, GIS and modelling environmental change, statistical analysis, sustainable development, social sciences methodologies eg. interviews, content and policy analysis. Dr Julia Newth and WWT colleagues will lead project development and Cambodian fieldwork. At University of York, the student will be supervised by Professor Kathryn Arnold (biodiversity conservation), Dr Richard Friend (water resource management, hydropower, fisheries and local livelihoods in the Mekong region) and at UHI Dr Elizabeth Marsden (spatial analysis).

The student will also gain experience in the design and implementation of biodiversity monitoring and experiments in natural settings to disentangle multiple biodiversity stressors. Additionally, they will develop valuable and transferable skills in cutting-edge molecular methods like DNA metabarcoding and bioinformatic and statistical analysis. The student will also engage with measurements and modelling of peatland emissions and develop a holistic understanding of the peatland biodiversity and functioning.

PhD Student – Christopher Middleton


“Over the course of my PhD I hope to work collaboratively with local stakeholders to create a sustainable, just, and bright future for the wetlands of the Mekong Delta and the people and wildlife that call it home.”

Peatlands are wetland habitats crucial for climate and water regulation but largely degraded in western Europe, with climatic trends and increased risk from wildfires further exacerbating their degradation. In Scotland, restoration efforts are improving peatland condition through tree-removal, creating mosaics of natural, degraded, and restored peatlands but wildfires continue to threaten restoration progress. Peat microbiomes determine ecosystem functioning but remain understudied, with basic understanding of the progression of such communities following restoration, wildfires, or both, lacking. Scottish landscapes offer the conditions to disentangle the effects of such stressors, and link microbiome to function.

The supervisory team of this project is comprised by UHI and University of York academics with expertise in atmospheric pollution science, and landscape-scale peatland and eDNA monitoring, in collaboration with private (SSE) and public (Forestry Land Scotland) stakeholders, and is well equipped to support the student’s development and project.

PhD Student – Beccy Middleton


“I am really interested in how insights from community ecology can help us to refine and improve ecological restoration outcomes. Although my background is in plant ecology and botany, this project focuses on the tiny organisms in peatland habitats which have an enormous impact on ecosystem functioning – bacteria, fungi and micro-eukaryotes (or protists). Protists are astonishingly diverse but have received less attention in the past than other microbes. A better understanding of how these groups respond to disturbances such as wildfires and bog restoration will help us look after our precious peatland habitats”

This CASE studentship project focuses on stressors causing wetland loss in the US and UK, compensatory restoration of wetlands, and the cutting edge of practical policies designed to achieve net positive environmental outcomes for wetlands overall. The supervisors at Oxford (Bull, zu Ermgassen) are ecologists, and leading experts in net environmental outcome instruments. The industry stakeholder
(Owen, from AstraZeneca) will link the student into a multi-million dollar global programme of landscape restoration projects. The supervisor at York (Heinemeyer) is a UK peatland expert, with an established network of stakeholders across UK uplands and to policymakers. The US supervisor (Robertson, from Wisconsin-Madison) will provide the same for the USA. The student will combine development of field-based skills and experience in wetland ecology – across the US and the UK – with cutting-edge analytical
research into some of the most important emerging regulatory mechanisms for nature conservation in the world today: net environmental outcome policies. They will consequently need to have or develop skills in fieldwork, statistical analyses, spatial analysis, and restoration ecology.

PhD Student – Alexander Dhond


“I am interested in identifying the risks to and improving policies around biodiversity offsets, particularly those focusing on wetland conservation. My PhD will investigate stressors causing wetland loss in the US and UK, and how policies like No Net Loss, Biodiversity Net Gain, and Nutrient Neutrality can enhance wetland restoration. I hope to combine field data on wetland characteristics in the UK with data from US restoration projects to identify effective policy attributes linked to successful outcomes. I am hoping the results of this work will feed into stronger legislation that will help us protect our valuable wetland ecosystems.”