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13 - Scaling up: taking ‘what works’ to the next level
- Edited by Michael Sanders, King's College London, Jonathan Breckon, King's College London
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- Book:
- The What Works Centres
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 20 January 2024
- Print publication:
- 28 April 2023, pp 166-183
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Summary
Introduction
This chapter sets out a call for What Works Centres to devote more attention and resources to supporting the scaling up of effective approaches – policies, services, practices, programmes and so on – to extend their reach and impact. We pick up the story of interventions at the point where an approach has been shown to have enough evidence behind it to justify its wider use – it has been shown to be effective, usable and implementable. Scaling up is then about expanding the reach and impact of an innovation to foster the greatest possible positive change for diverse groups, including the most marginalised and those with the greatest support needs. (We use the term ‘innovation’ throughout this chapter, recognising that what is being scaled up might be a policy, programme, service or practice but that it is by definition new to the scale-up setting.)
Of course, not everything should be scaled, even if it has been shown to be effective. McLean and Gargani introduce the concept of ‘judicious scaling’ and make the point that ‘scaling is a choice that must be justified’ (2019, p 34) and that involves trade-offs. Scaling up an innovation involves opportunity costs and compromises (List, 2022), for example between overall reach, focus on more marginalised groups, quality and cost. It would be very ambitious to scale up very widely, without losing touch with the needs of more marginalised groups, and to sustain quality of delivery, and to keep costs sufficiently low that demand is not reduced – and in practice choices and compromise are needed. But scaling up is clearly central to the ambitions of What Works Centres: there seems little point in identifying ‘what works’ without paying at least as much attention to how to achieve levels of reach and impact that are socially significant.
It is, however, a particularly challenging area of work, and in practice few effective innovations reach populations at scale (Fagan et al, 2019; Milat et al, 2020). It is easy to assume that a programme proven to be effective will be taken up by organisations and embraced by the wider system.
18 - Biogeochemical roles of fungi in marine and estuarine habitats
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- By Nicholas Clipson, Department of Industrial, Microbiology University College Dublin, Belfield Dublin 4, Ireland, Marinus Otte, Department of Botany, University College Dublin Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland, Eleanor Landy, School of Biomedical and Molecular Sciences University of Surrey Guildford GU2 7XH UK
- Edited by Geoffrey Michael Gadd, University of Dundee
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- Book:
- Fungi in Biogeochemical Cycles
- Published online:
- 10 December 2009
- Print publication:
- 04 May 2006, pp 436-461
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Summary
Introduction
Oceans cover around 70% of the global surface area, yet remain one of the least explored regions for fungal diversity; consequently knowledge of the fungal contribution to ecosystem processes in these marine environments is extremely limited. For the purposes of this review, marine habitats are defined as those influenced in some way by seawater, generally from existing saline water bodies. In some cases, saline habitats have resulted from salt accumulation in soils originating from ancient seas. Broadly, marine ecosystems divide between those influenced in some way by terrestrial environments, generally situated close to coastal regions, and those associated with the open ocean. Broad boundaries within marine environments are detailed in Table 18.1, where coastal and open ocean, and the effect of depth within open oceans, is differentiated. Marine environments tend also to be strongly linked, representing movement between different regions of seas and oceans, as summarized in Fig. 18.1. In coastal regions, numerous types of marine environment develop, including saline wetlands and lagoons on low-energy coasts, estuarine systems where there is freshwater influx, and a range of beach and splash communities on high-energy coasts. Such ecosystems are reviewed in more detail by Packham and Willis (1997). Adjacent to coastal regions, and where continental shelves are shallow, coastal sea communities form, including coral reefs, which are found in both tropical and cold seas. A number of inland saline environments also exist, such as salt pans and salt deserts.
Biogeochemical roles of fungi in marine and estuarine habitats
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- By Nicholas Clipson, Department of Industrial Microbiology, University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland, Eleanor Landy, School of Biomedical and Molecular Sciences, University of Surrey, Guildford GU2 7XH, UK, Marinus Otte, Department of Industrial Microbiology and Department of Botany, University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland
- Edited by Geoff Gadd, University of Dundee, Kirk Semple, Lancaster University
- Hilary Lappin-Scott, University of Exeter
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- Book:
- Micro-organisms and Earth Systems
- Published online:
- 06 July 2010
- Print publication:
- 13 October 2005, pp 321-344
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Summary
INTRODUCTION
A fungal component of the marine biota was only recognized as recently as 1944 (Barghoorn & Linder, 1944), and it was not until the 1960s that studies commenced to assess the extent and diversity of fungi in marine systems. Since this time, considerable effort has been exerted to uncover marine fungal diversity, with high decadal discovery indices in the 1970s and 80s (Hawksworth, 1991), resulting in around 1000 fungal species known today from marine environments. Nevertheless, it is hardly surprising that, with the extent of marine environments globally, we probably have a very incomplete view of fungal diversity, together with their frequency and function in these ecosystems. The objective of this review is to assess the extent of our present knowledge and to highlight future directions to further elucidate their biology and ecology.
THE NATURE OF MARINE ENVIRONMENTS
Marine ecosystems are globally extensive, and account for around 70 % of global surface area. They can be defined generally as aquatic systems influenced by substantial concentrations of salts, particularly sodium chloride, from existing oceanic systems. Seas and oceans divide between regions bordering and influenced by terrestrial regions and the open ocean, which is strongly zoned through the water column. These broad boundaries are illustrated in Fig. 1, which also details linkages between marine compartments.