Area of investment and support

Highlight topic funding rounds

The aim of the highlights programme is to support strategic research on a defined subject area.

• Budget: £179 million for rounds one to 10
• Duration: 2015 to 2025
• Partners involved: Natural Environment Research Council (NERC)

The scope and what we're doing

Highlight topics focused strategic research on a defined subject area. The size and duration of projects was specified for each highlight topic within each funding round.

Following the conclusion of the round 10 funding opportunity in June 2025, the highlight topics scheme will not be continued.

Building on lessons learned from the recent evaluation, we will evolve our approach to funding large-scale, community-driven research projects by developing a brand new scheme.

Opportunities, support and resources available

Highlight topics update July 2025

In 2024, NERC undertook an evaluation of its highlight topics (HTs) scheme, following ten rounds of funding. The evaluation aimed to understand the scheme’s effectiveness, agility and bureaucratic burden and explore opportunities for improvements in all these areas. Here is a summary of the key findings, conclusions, and next steps.

What we learned

The evaluation generated a number of insights. This included:

• the HTs scheme was valued for enabling large-scale, complex projects, though the smaller £2.5 million award level was sometimes too limiting
• it successfully drew in high-quality ideas in novel areas or research gaps
• the scheme enabled community-driven research, and provided an opportunity to develop ideas via stakeholder collaboration
• HT idea submissions tended to come from a small proportion of the research community, with non-higher education institution stakeholders often under-represented
• the HT idea generation process and timing of opportunity announcement were perceived as potentially introducing bias in funding outcomes
• there was a perception of a lack of transparency around prioritisation and selection of HT ideas, with limited feedback to submitters
• the HT idea generation and prioritisation process was lengthy and administratively burdensome

Based on these insights, NERC drew the following conclusions:

• NERC should maintain the challenge- and outcome-focused approach of HTs and retain an opportunity that offers this scale of funding for standalone projects
• there is value in using community-informed evidence when identifying NERC’s strategic research investment priorities
• diversity of engagement across the breadth of the research and stakeholder community in informing priority research areas could be improved
• the process for identifying priorities for research investment should be more streamlined and decision-making more transparent

Additional considerations:

• funding offered via the existing HTs and discovery science large grants schemes is very similar in scale and purpose
• there are opportunities to avoid duplication, add value and reduce community burden by harmonising aspects of these two schemes

What this means for the future

We are evolving our funding approach to respond to community feedback and simplify our processes. We will launch a single new scheme to replace our existing large grants and highlight topics, with funding offered on a similar monetary scale.

This new scheme will support a combination of discovery science and strategically targeted research within the same funding opportunity. Applicants will decide which aspect they wish to address within their application. Strategic priority areas will be identified within each funding opportunity. Funding will be allocated based primarily on research quality, but with an expectation that a certain proportion will be directed towards projects in strategic priority areas.

Creating this new scheme enables review and harmonisation of processes and funding mechanisms across two very similar funding streams and provides an opportunity to review our process for identifying priority areas for investment. We intend to launch a pilot of this new scheme in 2027.

Bridging the gap

To maintain support for large-scale, curiosity-driven research in the interim, NERC will launch a discovery science large grants funding opportunity in October 2025 with an uplifted budget of £20 million.

NERC values information received directly from the community regarding larger scale, including interdisciplinary, challenges that require substantial environmental research to be addressed. We therefore encourage all relevant stakeholders to continue to provide this input via existing communication channels. This will contribute to the evidence base used to inform future strategic priority areas.

More details on how the new scheme will be delivered will be shared in due course.

Past projects, outcomes and impact

Find details of past funding awards on Grants on the Web.

There have been ten rounds of highlight topics.

Round ten, funding opportunity closed October 2024

• evaluation of oxidation in the tropics to improve projections of atmospheric composition
• marine-based ice sheet contributions to past, present and future sea-level rise
• signal to noise errors and implications for climate predictions and projections
• understanding the threat of perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in the environment
• pollutant deposition enhancement to upland ecosystems

Round nine, funding opportunity closed March 2023

• risks and impacts of climate tipping points
• climate feedbacks from physical disturbance of the seafloor
• temperature and health: towards environmental solutions in a changing climate
• risks and co-benefits of ocean alkalinity enhancement and related carbon dioxide removal strategies on marine ecosystems
• impacts of extreme weather events in Antarctica
• building understanding of natural coastal protection by gravel barriers in a changing climate

Round eight, funding opportunity closed March 2022

• eco-evolutionary drivers of emerging antifungal resistance
• understanding and predicting changes in mountain water resources
• advances in halocarbon research
• mixing of stratified shelf sea biogeochemistry by offshore renewable energy
• wildfire management tools in the UK
• assessment and monitoring of urban geothermal resources
• microbial community dynamics

Round seven, funding opportunity closed March 2021

• ionosphere at multiple scales: scientific exploitation of the new EISCAT_3D radar
• using system-wide approaches to understand and use environmental barriers to restrict or manage the spread of current and future zoonotic pathogens
• creating resilient, productive and healthy urban environments through a novel understanding of ecosystem processes
• drivers and climate implications of recent rapid loss of Antarctic sea ice
• urban climate feedbacks between street, neighbourhood, and city scale processes
• understanding the environmental basis for prevention of zoonotic pathogen emergence

Round six, funding opportunity closed March 2020

• biodegradable plastics as emerging environmental pollutants: aimed to determine the potential environmental impact of biodegradable bioplastics to better understand the environmental effects of changing plastic production trends
• understanding and predicting the cross-ecosystem impacts of insect decline on ecosystem services and natural capital: aimed to better understand the causes, mechanisms, and consequences of insect decline through taking a multiple taxa and drivers approach to understand the cascading consequences for insect-dependent species, ecosystem functions and services
• marine terminating glaciers in the Earth system: aimed to better understand the coupling of Greenland’s marine terminating outlet glaciers and the ocean in the context of global climate variability, and in so doing, improve projections of its future dynamic response and sea-level contributions
• achieving net environmental gain and resilient ecosystems in the UK: aimed to understand what mechanisms are at work in ecosystem restoration, and how biodiversity, complexity, connectivity, feedback and resilience can be secured, with differing approaches to terrestrial system interventions
• consequences of accelerating Arctic warming for European climate and extreme weather: aimed to increase understanding of atmospheric and oceanic circulation changes in response to Arctic warming and, more broadly, the drivers of European climate and extreme weather on decadal to centennial timescales
• poly Isotopologues for constraining atmospheric budgets: aimed to integrate nascent techniques in isotope geochemistry into atmospheric monitoring science to study the rapidly changing modern atmosphere
• understanding global lithium resources and cycles to enable a low carbon future: aimed to develop a holistic understanding of the global biogeochemical cycle for lithium

Round five, funding opportunity closed March 2019

• marine noise pollution: understanding chronic effects: aimed to characterise current levels of chronic ocean sound and increase our understanding of the effects on marine fauna of chronic exposure to increased marine noise
• understanding the likelihood and impact of UK wildfires: provided underpinning science and model development to quantify wildfire likelihood, impact and risk for the UK and similar highly populated, intensively managed regions
• impact of experimental deep-sea mining in the central pacific: a new interdisciplinary challenge for UK environmental science – aimed to provide new insight into the actual impacts of deep-sea mining and provide a full assessment of ecosystem resilience
• assessing large scale ecological responses to environmental change: sought to quantify and predict ecological stability across ecosystem types and scales, using quantifiable and transferable indicators of the persistence and resilience of ecosystems, and to identify the ecological processes governing resilience across ecosystem types
• the impact of legacy waste in the coastal zone: aimed to determine the impacts of solid waste in the coastal zone on coastal and marine environments and transitional waters, to enable the associated risks to be managed
• advancing capabilities to predict UK and European weather conditions one season ahead: to advance our fundamental understanding of the predictability of European climate on seasonal timescales and to ensure that these advances are translated into improved forecast capabilities
• the mineral systems approach to exploration and discovery of new sediment hosted copper (Co, V) deposits: aimed to integrate methods and approaches used in both minerals and petroleum search spaces to develop a new minerals system approach for mineral exploration in sedimentary basins

Round four, funding opportunity closed March 2018

• emerging risks from microplastics in the marine environment: aimed to build on the UK’s existing strong international standing in this field by supporting research that addressed a number of gaps in our understanding of marine microplastics and their potential impact on ecosystems
• what is the 4PM? New understanding of soil organic carbon persistence to meet C offset targets: aimed to improve our fundamental knowledge of soil organic carbon (SOC) dynamics to help deliver carbon-offset targets through informing management practises that enable the sequestration of carbon in soil, and to help inform current policy gaps and specifically explore options to deliver the ‘four pour mille’ (4p1000) initiative that advocates increasing SOC by 0.4% per year to both reduce the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, and contribute to overall improved soil health
• policy-relevant climate modelling to quantify and manage the risk of climate hazards: to deliver a state-of-the-art assessment of climate change hazards and approaches to managing associated risks, contributing to the sixth Coupled Model Intercomparison Project, CMIP6
• deep subsurface heat as a potential major future energy resource: aimed to bring about a reappraisal of knowledge of deep geothermal energy in the UK
• multiphase evolution of volcanic emission: aimed to improve characterisation of the multiphase processes experienced by volcanic emissions from source to sink to enable a significant step-change in our ability to predict eruption cloud evolution and deposition
• preservation and potential of seafloor mineral resources: to enhance our knowledge of the metallogeny of the oceans in order to verify the strategic value of and contribute to the global assessment of deep-sea mineral resources
• the impact of light pollution on biological processes: to provide an important evaluation of ecological and evolutionary consequences of the continuous and global increase in the extent of light pollution, specifically artificial light at night
• understanding urban soil properties, functions, and below-ground interconnections in delivery of ecosystem services: aimed to improve knowledge of urban soils to better understand their properties and how they deliver the ecosystem services required of them, including support of green infrastructure projects; to inform on the quality and quantity of ecosystem services provided by soils across urban landscapes, enabling more effective management at a range of spatial and temporal scales relevant to contrasting urban environments
• impacts of future ship traffic and emission regulations upon gas-phase chemistry, aerosol composition and radiative forcing in the North Atlantic and Arctic atmosphere: aimed to increase our understanding of the impact of future ship traffic and emission regulations upon gas-phase chemistry, aerosol composition and radiative forcing in the North Atlantic and Arctic atmosphere
• objective verification of national carbon budgets for assessing climate change mitigation measures: to improve evaluation of UK greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions at the sub-national and sectoral level and provide better understanding of the UK’s GHG sources and sinks.

Round three, funding opportunity closed September 2016

• new insights into space weather impact on UK national grounded infrastructure: aimed to enhance our geophysical understanding of how the UK near-surface and subsurface responds to severe space weather, information that will ultimately lead to tools for assessing space weather impacts on grounded infrastructure, together with industry and other partners
• genesis of magmatic-hosted ore deposits: a systems approach – aimed to develop reliable proxies for distinguishing magmatic rocks associated with mineralisation from those that are not, and robust indicators of proximal mineralization from magmatic rocks and younger sediments
• modelling and forecasting the Earth’s radiation belts: aimed to increase our understanding of the satellite environment by assessing the role of wave particle interactions in the acceleration and loss of radiation belt electrons
• innovative application of big data techniques to natural hazard prediction and risk mitigation: to transform our understanding of and ability to respond to environmental hazards by delivering more accurate predictions and challenging our understanding of processes through the merger of both structured observation data, and unstructured or qualitative data, with state-of-the-art computational models

Round two, funding opportunity closed October 2015

• evolutionary biotic response to environmental change: limits to adaptation – to improve our understanding and predictive capabilities of the dynamics of communities, and the limits of their adaptive capacities in response to environmental change through the integration of ecology and evolutionary genetics
• coastal morphology: coastal sediment budgets and their role in coastal recovery – to better understand dynamic coastal processes, both physical and biological, and their role in coastal recovery
• closing the global methane budget: to close the global methane budget through undertaking new observations and further analysis of existing data
• reducing uncertainty in the integrity of potential carbon capture and storage sites: to improve knowledge of the integrity of the sedimentary overburden of potential CO2 storage reservoirs in the North Sea region

Round one, funding opportunity closed April 2015

• understanding and predicting anomalous trends in surface temperature and implications for decadal to centennial climate behaviour: to better understand the causes of periods where the rate of global mean surface temperature is increased or decreased at decadal time-scales compared with long-term trends at centennial timescales, with a particular focus to understand the slowdown in the rate of warming since the late 1990s
• environmental pathways, impacts and fate of manufactured nanomaterials: to increase the understanding of how manufactured nanomaterials (NMs) behave in the real world, including their transport, transformation, impact, and eventual fate within their environmental pathways, to inform the development of management strategies and policies that minimise the environmental and health risks of NMs without overly precautionary regulation
• dynamics of freshwater ecosystems within an integrated landscape system: to support the research needed to develop a coherent ecosystems-based understanding of freshwater systems at the landscape scale in the UK, and underpin the development of sustainable management strategies
• environmental DNA (eDNA): a key new tool for 21st century ecology: to address the current knowledge gap in the application of eDNA approaches to move from species identification (targeted genome sequencing) to full community profiles (metagenetics, using phylogenetic or functional marker genes) and understanding functional biodiversity and the dynamics of ecosystem functioning (metagenomics)

Who to contact

Highlight topics team

Email:  highlighttopics@nerc.ukri.org

Last updated: 22 July 2025