Environment
The evolution of the Earth is a story of environmental change. Change that, over the past few million years, has stimulated human creativity and is being increasingly shaped by human influence.
Population growth, climate change, globalisation and technological advances are placing unprecedented pressures on the environment and the ecosystem services it provides, such as safe food, clean water and air, flood mitigation, disease prevention, spiritual wellbeing and raw materials.
Reducing these pressures and sustaining these ecosystem services demands a rigorous understanding of the complex systems underpinning these services, which itself entails bringing together research excellence across a wide range of disciplines.
With this motivation, the Environment Theme harnesses the University of Reading’s world-leading strengths in environment-related research — enabling stronger research interactions, reach and impact amongst some 200 academics across the university — to better understand and tackle the challenges of environmental change.
