Summary: Background: Lung damage in severe COVID-19 is highly heterogeneous however studies with dedicated spatial distinction of discrete temporal phases of diffuse alveolar damage (DAD) and alternate lung injury patterns are lacking. Existing studies have also not accounted for progressive airspace obliteration in cellularity estimates. We used an imaging mass cytometry (IMC) analysis with an airspace correction step to more accurately identify the cellular immune response that underpins the heterogeneity of severe COVID-19 lung disease. Methods: Lung tissue was obtained at post-mortem from severe COVID-19 deaths. Pathologist-selected regions of interest (ROIs) were chosen by light microscopy representing the patho-evolutionary spectrum of DAD and alternate disease phenotypes were selected for comparison. Architecturally normal SARS-CoV-2-positive lung tissue and tissue from SARS-CoV-2-negative donors served as controls. ROIs were stained for 40 cellular protein markers and ablated using IMC before segmented cells were classified. Cell populations corrected by ROI airspace and their spatial relationships were compared across lung injury patterns. Findings: Forty patients (32M:8F, age: 22–98), 345 ROIs and >900k single cells were analysed. DAD progression was marked by airspace obliteration and significant increases in mononuclear phagocytes (MnPs), T and B lymphocytes and significant decreases in alveolar epithelial and endothelial cells. Neutrophil populations proved stable overall although several interferon-responding subsets demonstrated expansion. Spatial analysis revealed immune cell interactions occur prior to microscopically appreciable tissue injury. Interpretation: The immunopathogenesis of severe DAD in COVID-19 lung disease is characterised by sustained increases in MnPs and lymphocytes with key interactions occurring even prior to lung injury is established. Funding: UK Research and Innovation/Medical Research Council through the UK Coronavirus Immunology Consortium, Barbour Foundation, General Sir John Monash Foundation, Newcastle University, JGW Patterson Foundation, Wellcome Trust.

AIMS:Widespread disruption of healthcare services and excess mortality not directly attributed to COVID-19 occurred between March and May 2020. We undertook the first UK multicentre study of coroners' autopsies before and during this period using postmortem reports.METHODS:We reviewed reports of non-forensic coroners' autopsies performed during the first COVID-19 lockdown (23 March to 8 May 2020), and the same period in 2018. Deaths were categorised as natural non-COVID-19, COVID-19-related, non-natural (suicide, drug and alcohol-related, traumatic, other). We provided opinion regarding whether delayed access to medical care or changes in behaviour due to lockdown were a potential factor in deaths.RESULTS:Seven centres covering nine coronial jurisdictions submitted a total of 1100 coroners' autopsies (498 in 2018, 602 in 2020). In only 54 autopsies was death attributed to COVID-19 (9%). We identified a significant increase in cases where delays in accessing medical care potentially contributed to death (10 in 2018, 44 in 2020). Lockdown was a contributing factor in a proportion of suicides (24%) and drug and alcohol-related deaths (12%).CONCLUSIONS:Postmortem reports have considerable utility in evaluating excess mortality due to healthcare and wider societal disruption during a pandemic. They provide information at an individual case level that is not available from assessment of death certification data. Detailed evaluation of coroners' autopsy reports, supported by appropriate regulatory oversight, is recommended to mitigate disruption and indirect causes of mortality in future pandemics. Maintaining access to healthcare, including substance misuse and mental health services, is an important consideration.

Background Post mortem examination of lung and heart tissue has been vital to developing an understanding of COVID-19 pathophysiology; however studies to date have almost uniformly used tissue obtained from hospital-based deaths where individuals have been exposed to major medical and pharmacological interventions. Methods In this study we investigated patterns of lung and heart injury from 46 community-based, pre-hospital COVID-19-attributable deaths who underwent autopsy. Results The cohort comprised 22 females and 24 males, median age 64 years (range 19–91) at time of death with illness duration range 0–23 days. Comorbidities associated with poor outcomes in COVID-19 included obesity (body mass index >30 kg·m−2) in 19 out of 46 cases (41.3%). Diffuse alveolar damage in its early exudative phase was the most common pattern of lung injury; however significant heterogeneity was identified with bronchopneumonia, pulmonary oedema consistent with acute cardiac failure, pulmonary thromboembolism and microthrombosis also identified and often in overlapping patterns. Review of clinical records and next of kin accounts suggested a combination of unexpectedly low symptom burden, rapidly progressive disease and psychosocial factors may have contributed to a failure of hospital presentation prior to death. Conclusions Identifying such advanced acute lung injury in community-based deaths is extremely unusual and raises the question why some with severe COVID-19 pneumonitis were not hospitalised. Multiple factors including low symptom burden, rapidly progressive disease trajectories and psychosocial factors provide possible explanations.

The lungs are the main site that is affected in severe COVID-19, and post-mortem lung tissue provides crucial insights into the pathophysiology of severe disease. From basic histology to state-of-the-art multiparameter digital pathology technologies, post-mortem lung tissue provides snapshots of tissue architecture, and resident and inflammatory cell phenotypes and composition at the time of death. Contrary to early assumptions that COVID-19 in the lungs is a uniform disease, post-mortem findings have established a high degree of disease heterogeneity. Classic diffuse alveolar damage represents just one phenotype, with disease divisible by early and late progression as well as by pathophysiological process. A distinct lung tissue state occurs with secondary infection; extrapulmonary causes of death might also originate from a pathological process in the lungs linked to microthrombosis. This heterogeneity of COVID-19 lung disease must be recognised in the management of patients and in the development of novel treatment strategies.

Ninety-six people died following a crowd crush at the Hillsborough Football Stadium, Sheffield, UK in 1989. The cause of death in nearly all cases was compression asphyxia. The clinical and pathological features of deaths encountered in crowds are discussed with a particular focus on the Hillsborough disaster.

This paper explores spiritual and aesthetic cultural values associated with ecosystems. We argue that these values are not best captured by instrumental or consequentialist thinking, and they are grounded in conceptions of nature that differ from the ecosystem services conceptual framework. To support our case, we engage with theories of the aesthetic and the spiritual, sample the discourse of 'wilderness', and provide empirical evidence from the recent UK National Ecosystem Assessment Follow-on Phase. We observe that accounts of spiritual and aesthetic value in Western culture are diverse and expressed through different media. We recognise that humans do benefit from their aesthetic and spiritual experiences of nature. However, aesthetic and spiritual understandings of the value of nature lead people to develop moral responsibilities towards nature and these are more significant than aesthetic and spiritual benefits from nature. We conclude that aesthetic and spiritual values challenge economic conceptions of ecosystems and of value ( including existence value), and that an analysis of cultural productions and a plural-values approach are needed to evidence them appropriately for decision-making.

Valuation that focuses only on individual values evades the substantial collective and intersubjective meanings, significance and value from ecosystems. Shared, plural and cultural values of ecosystems constitute a diffuse and interdisciplinary field of research, covering an area that links questions around value ontology, elicitation and aggregation with questions of participation, ethics, and social justice. Synthesising understanding from various contributions to this Special Issue of Ecosystem Services, and with a particular focus on deliberation and deliberative valuation, we discuss key findings and present 35 future research questions in eight topic areas: 1) the ontology of shared values; 2) the role of catalyst and conflict points; 3) shared values and cultural ecosystem services; 4) transcendental values; 5) the process and outcomes of deliberation; 6) deliberative monetary valuation; 7) value aggregation, meta-values and ‘rules of the game’; and 8) integrating valuation methods. The results of this Special Issue and these key questions can help develop a more extensive evidence base to mature the area and develop environmental valuation into a more pluralistic, comprehensive, robust, legitimate and effective way of safeguarding ecosystems and their services for the future.

Ecosystem services conceptualise the diverse values that ecosystems provide to humanity. This was recognised in the United Kingdom's National Ecosystem Assessment, which noted that appreciation of the full value of ecosystem services requires recognition of values that are shared. By operationalising the shared values concept, it is argued that the contribution of ecosystem services to human well-being can be represented more holistically. This paper considers current understanding of shared values and develops a new metanarrative of shared values beyond the aggregated utilities of individuals. This metanarrative seeks to conceptualise how values can be held both individually and communally, and what this means for identifying their scale and means of enumeration. The paper poses a new reading of the idea of shared values that reconciles the elicitation of pre-formed individual values with the formation and expression of shared social values. The implication is that shared values need to be conceived as normative constructs that are derived through social processes of value formation and expression. Shared values thus do not necessarily exist a priori; they can be deliberated through formal and informal processes through which individuals can separate their own preferences from a broader metanarrative about what values ought to be shared.

Social valuation of ecosystem services and public policy alternatives is one of the greatest challenges facing ecological economists today. Frameworks for valuing nature increasingly include shared/social values as a distinct category of values. However, the nature of shared/social values, as well as their relationship to other values, has not yet been clearly established and empirical evidence about the importance of shared/social values for valuation of ecosystem services is lacking. To help address these theoretical and empirical limitations, this paper outlines a framework of shared/social values across five dimensions: value concept, provider, intention, scale, and elicitation process. Along these dimensions we identify seven main, non-mutually exclusive types of shared values: transcendental, cultural/societal, communal, group, deliberated and other-regarding values, and value to society. Using a case study of a recent controversial policy on forest ownership in England, we conceptualise the dynamic interplay between shared/social and individual values. The way in which social value is assessed in neoclassical economics is discussed and critiqued, followed by consideration of the relation between shared/social values and Total Economic Value, and a review of deliberative and non-monetary methods for assessing shared/social values. We conclude with a discussion of the importance of shared/social values for decision-making.

Since the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA) highlighted the importance of ecosystem services for human well-being, the payments for such services have increasingly been drawing the attention of governments, the private sector and academia. Nonetheless, there is not yet a specific legal framework which is able to capture the complexity of managing natural resources and, at the same time, deal with the numerous drawbacks that have been identified by critics, who are opposed to using financialisation of the environment as a tool. This paper, after briefly summarizing some of the main features and criticisms of the Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES), will critically assess the understanding of property rights over natural resources as stewardship, rather than as entitlement, because this interpretation is more coherent with the inherent characteristics of natural resources and, consequently, of ecosystem services. The novel usage of a stewardship dimension to property rights underlines the necessity for a legal framework for PES, constituted by “property-liability rules”.

Grasshopper strips (alternate, 1-m wide strips of u ncut and cut grassland) are a novel conservation feature in a rural churchyard in the village of Riv enhall (Essex), southeast England. The effectivene ss of these strips in enhancing the abundance of grass hoppers (Acrididae) was investigated during the summer of 2010 using sweep-net surveys. Two grassh opper species were recorded. The meadow grasshopper Chorthippus parallelus was significantly more abundant in the cut grassho pper strips than in nearby short grassland (control) plots regu larly mown throughout the summer. The field grasshopper Chorthippus brunneus was contrastingly more abundant in the uncut grassh opper strips than in the controls. The grasshopper strips appea r to provide a mosaic of short and tall grassland i n close proximity which is required for nymphs and ad ults of both C. parallelus and C. brunneus .

Landscapes that we think of as 'natural' are also cultural artifacts, a combination of ideology and the concrete. Awareness of this can illuminate debates on how to manage natural areas. Different social groups with different values espouse different images of 'nature'. Four concepts of nature current in Britain are outlined: biodiversity, historic countryside, wilderness and com- panionship. All four of these need to be instantiated to complement each other, though each will be more appropriate for particular circumstances. Political alliances between supporters of these views should be built to promote atten- tiveness and care for the more-than-human around us.

This article describes the development of an international and multidisciplinary project funded by the Spanish Polar Programme on Byers Peninsula (Livingston Island, South Shetlands). The project adopted Byers Peninsula as an international reference site for coastal and terrestrial (including inland waters) research within the framework of the International Polar Year initiative. Over 30 scientists from 12 countries and 26 institutions participated in the field work, and many others participated in the processing of the samples. The main themes investigated were: Holocene changes in climate, using both lacustrine sediment cores and palaeo-nests of penguins; limnology of the lakes, ponds, rivers and wetlands; microbiology of microbial mats, ecology of microbial food webs and viral effects on aquatic ecosystems; ornithology, with investigations on a Gentoo penguin rookery (Pygoscelis papua) as well as the flying ornithofauna; biocomplexity and life cycles of species from different taxonomic groups; analysis of a complete watershed unit from a landscape perspective; and human impacts, specifically the effect of trampling on soil characteristics and biota.Byers Peninsula offers many features as an international reference site given it is one of the largest ice-free areas in the Antarctic Peninsula region, it has a variety of different landscape units, and it hosts diverse aquatic ecosystems. Moreover, the Byers Peninsula is a hotspot for Antarctic biodiversity, and because of its high level of environmental protection, it has been very little affected by human activities. Finally, the proximity to the Spanish polar installations on Livingston Island and the experience derived from previous expeditions to the site make it logistically feasible as a site for ongoing monitoring and research.

One context for the papers arising from INTECOL VII in this special issue is the debate over the social construction of science. Some fear that advocates for the social or cultural construction of ecology will undermine attempts to defend nature. But resources are made available in a mediating position of social 'construal', particularly alerting ecologists to the social and ethical dimensions of the conducting of their work. When speaking, ecologists will use living and dead metaphors and these carry connotations which in turn raise ethical questions. Different political interest groups may use a word like biodiversity for different ethical purposes. The position of any one speaker is limited, and so greater knowledge is achieved if scientists listen to the situated knowledges of other, diverse people. Even Nature herself, or creatures, may have aspects of personhood. The good ecologist will listen with empathy as a naturalist to what is being said, giving Nature the respect she deserves. These are some of the ethical implications in the very doing of ecology.

Areas set apart for nature conservation in Britain are broadly categorised according to their cultural purpose, and names are assigned to these in this paper. Nature reserves may be similar to zoos and botanic gardens in aiming to maintain the diversity of species and if so are termed ‘biodiversity reserves’. This tradition understands nature as a static collection of entities apart from humans. Maintaining traditional management at a site is arguably a good way to sustain species, it also retains old ways in which humans and nature were integrated in the life of the nation and so are called ‘historic countryside parks’. There is growing interest in ‘wilderness areas’, where nature is seen as primarily processes protected from human interference. Despite the strength of each of these, they suffer from attempting to restrict nature to a ghetto, a process that is economically and environmentally costly. ‘Companion places’ are places which set sustainable examples of integrating human life and economic activity with maintaining biodiversity and offering an opportunity to encounter wild processes at the heart of life. The language of these four types, or vectors, of nature reserves is offered to help the discussion of our place in nature.