An Ecosystem Services-Based Approach to Frame NBS in Urban Context

Rapid urbanization in many parts of the world has increasingly put the environment under pressure, with natural landscapes cleared to make way for built infrastructure. Urban ecosystems, and the services that they provide, can offer nature-based solutions to the challenges of urbanization. There is increasing interest in better incorporating ecosystems into urban planning and design in order to deliver greater provision of ecosystem services and enhance urban liveability. However, there are few examples of built or proposed urban developments that have been designed specifically with ecosystem services in mind–partly because there are few modeling tools available to support urban planners and designers by informing their design workflows. Through using Singapore’s latest nature-centric town as a case study, this article assesses the impacts of nature-based solutions in urban design on ecosystem services performance, through a spatially explicit modeling approach. The proposed future scenario for the nature-centric town was projected to result in substantial declines in the provision of all ecosystem services, as a result of the removal of large areas of natural vegetation cover. However, the future scenario compared favourably against three older towns that have been constructed in Singapore, showing the best performance for four out of six ecosystem services. This simulation exercise indicates that designing towns with ecosystem services in mind, and incorporating nature-based solutions into urban design, can help to achieve enhanced performance in providing ecosystem services. The models developed for this study have been made publicly available for use in other tropical cities.

The conceptual quantitative assessment framework for Nature-based Solutions (NbS)

We live in an urbanizing world. Since 2008, more than half of humanity lives in cities, both large and small, and old and new.[...]

Floods are a reoccurring global phenomenon. Practical implementation of flood risk management relies heavily on grey infrastructure with a lesser focus on nature-based solutions (NBS). With the rising awareness about ecosystem services, natural flood management measures are getting more attention from scientists and policymakers. Lithuanian authorities in the national flood risk management plan provide four NBS for flood management: afforestation, wetlands restorations, agri-environmental measures, and water retention in urban areas (e.g., ponds). However, implementation of the NBS requires more land than grey infrastructure. In the case of Lithuania, in some instances, the NBS require a change of the land use or impacts upon the private land. Therefore, it can be influenced by the legal regulations related to land use planning and protection of private property rights. The problems may occur in case of the insufficient, incomplete, incoherent, or contradictory legal framework. The analysis revealed that the Law on the Land, the Law on the Special Land Use Conditions, and the Law on the Territorial Planning are insufficiently coordinated, which may influence implementation of the NBS on the private property. The afforestation is foreseen only for the public land. However, those lands are mainly used for the agriculture, and in this case possibilities to change the land use are restricted. A similar problem may occur if the area for the afforestation lays within the protected area. The Law on the Protected Areas allows land use changes only in exceptional circumstances; the flood mitigation is not one of them. The incoherence or incompleteness of law, which can hamper implementation of NBS, can occur not only in Lithuania. Therefore, the study can be a starting point for further investigations and solutions in this regard.

Deltas are among the most productive and diverse global ecosystems. However, these regions are highly vulnerable to natural disasters and climate change. Nature-based solutions (Nbs) have been increasingly adopted in many deltas to improve their resilience. Among decision support tools, assessment of ecosystem services (ES) through spatially explicit modelling plays an important role in advocating for Nbs. This study explores the use of the Land Utilisation and Capability Indicator (LUCI) model, a high-resolution model originally developed in temperate hill country regions, to map changes in multiple ecosystem services (ES), along with their synergies and trade-offs, between 2010 and 2018 in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta (VMD). In so doing, this study contributes to the current knowledge in at least two aspects: high-resolution ES modelling in the VMD, and the combination of ES biophysical and economic values within the VMD to support Nbs implementation. To date, this is the highest resolution (5 by 5 m) ES modelling study ever conducted in the VMD, with ~1500 million elements generated per ES. In the process of trialling implementations of LUCI within the VMD’s unique environmental conditions and data contexts, we identify and suggest potential model enhancements to make the LUCI model more applicable to the VMD as well as other tropical deltaic regions. LUCI generated informative results in much of the VMD for the selected ES (flood mitigation, agriculture/aquaculture productivity, and climate regulation), but challenges arose around its application to a new agro-hydrological regime. To address these challenges, parameterising LUCI and reconceptualising some of the model’s mechanisms to specifically account for the productivity and flood mitigation capability of water-tolerant crops as well as flooding processes of deltaic regions will improve future ES modelling in tropical deltaic areas. The ES maps showed the spatial heterogeneity of ES across the VMD. Next, to at least somewhat account for the economic drivers which need to be considered alongside biophysical valuations for practical implementations of ES maps for nature-based solutions (Nbs) in the upstream VMD, economic values were assigned to different parcels using a benefit transfer approach. The spatially explicit ES economic value maps can inform the design of financing incentives for Nbs. The results and related work can be used to support the establishment of Nbs that ultimately contribute to the security of local farmers’ livelihoods and the sustainability of the VMD.

The sustainable development goals (SDGs) for 2030 are established to address global challenges including environment and human well-being. The SDGs are interconnected and achievement of them requires consideration of the planet’s ecosystems and resources - land, water and air. Ecosystem services (ES) approach has a high potential for better planning, policy and decision making. Understanding how different ecosystems (e.g., forests, rivers, wetlands, grasslands) contribute to the social and economic benefits is critical to ensure the long-term biodiversity protection and sustainable use of ecosystems. A conceptual framework linking biodiversity and ecosystem condition (its structure and functions), and ES to human well-being has been well-established in EU by so called MAES process (Mapping and Assessment of Ecosystem Services) lead by the European Commission. The framework is applied in recent research studies and projects, as well as national MAES processes. Various methods are applied for MAES in terms to determine biophysical, economic and social values and to deliver integrated ecosystem assessment. Assessment of ES and trade off analysis shall provide a new perspective for land use planning and decision making at different administrative and spatial levels and in different sectoral policies. EU and national policies for instance on agriculture, fishery, forestry, climate should account the benefits provided by relevant ecosystems and to ensure that the values are not diminished but rather enhanced during the implementation of the policies. Terrestrial and water ecosystems are interconnected as land-based human activities creates pressure that impacts the conditions in water ecosystems and thus delivery of ES by rivers and lakes. For example, intensive agricultural land use produces food for people and income; however, the activity also most frequently causes problems with water quality and quantity in the catchment area and a loss of biodiversity. A risk of such trade-off shall be handled in policy development. Ecosystems also contributes to the resilience of communities by reducing the risk of natural hazards and mitigate adverse impacts. Regulating services such as flood control are substituting investments in flood protection ensured by forests, wetlands and grasslands instead of human built infrastructure. Appropriate land cover and land use shall serve as a basic flood protection measure. Natural processes are increasingly recognised to create new-type solutions that use and deploy the properties of natural ecosystems and their services in an “engineered” way. A wide range of measures called also as nature-based solutions provide another opportunity to work with nature towards global sustainability.

Urban landscapes are increasingly recognized as providing important ecosystem services (ES) to their occupants. Yet, urban ES assessments often ignore the complex spatial heterogeneity and land-use history of cities. Soil-based services may be particularly susceptible to land-use legacy effects. We studied indicators of three soil-based ES, carbon storage, water quality regulation, and runoff regulation, in a historically agricultural urban landscape and asked (1) How do ES indicators vary with contemporary land cover and time since development? (2) Do ES indicators vary primarily among land-cover classes, within land-cover classes, or within sites? (3) What is the relative contribution of urban land-cover classes to potential citywide ES provision? We measured biophysical indicators (soil carbon [C], available phosphorus [P], and saturated hydraulic conductivity [Ks ]) in 100 sites across five land-cover classes, spanning an ~125-year gradient of time since development within each land-cover class. Potential for ES provision was substantial in urban green spaces, including developed land. Runoff regulation services (high Ks ) were highest in forests; water quality regulation (low P) was highest in open spaces and grasslands; and open spaces and developed land (e.g., residential yards) had the highest C storage. In developed land covers, both C and P increased with time since development, indicating effects of historical land-use on contemporary ES and trade-offs between two important ES. Among-site differences accounted for a high proportion of variance in soil properties in forests, grasslands, and open space, while residential areas had high within-site variability, underscoring the leverage city residents have to improve urban ES provision. Developed land covers contributed most ES supply at the citywide scale, even after accounting for potential impacts of impervious surfaces. Considering the full mosaic of urban green space and its history is needed to estimate the kinds and magnitude of ES provided in cities, and to augment regional ES assessments that often ignore or underestimate urban ES supply.

Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is the region most vulnerable to climate change and related hydro-meteorological risks. These risks are exacerbated in rapidly expanding urban areas due to the loss and degradation of green and blue spaces with their regulating ecosystem services. The potential of nature-based solutions (NBS) to mitigate hydro-meteorological risks such as floods is increasingly recognized in Europe. However, its application in urban areas of SSA still needs to be systematically explored to inform and promote its uptake in this region. We conducted a multidisciplinary systematic review following the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) protocol to establish the general patterns in the literature on NBS and hydro-meteorological risk mitigation in SSA. We searched scientific journal databases, websites of 12 key institutions and 11 NBS databases and identified 45 papers for analysis. We found at least one reported NBS in 71 % of urban areas of SSA across 83 locations. 62 % of the papers were clustered in South Africa, Kenya, Tanzania and Nigeria only, while the most studied cities were Dar es Salaam and Kampala. Moreover, 66 NBS practices were identified, most of which (n=44) were for flood mitigation. With only Mozambique (n=2) reporting NBS among the most at-risk countries, we found that NBS are implemented where risks occur but not where they are most severe. Mangrove restoration and wetland restoration, reforestation and urban forests, and agroforestry and conservation agriculture were the most common NBS practices identified for floods, extreme heat and drought mitigation, respectively. Traditional practices that fit the definition of NBS, such as grass strips and stone bunds, and practices more popular in the Global North, such as green roofs and green façades, were also identified. These NBS also provided ecosystem services, including 15 regulatory, 5 provisioning and 4 cultural ecosystem services, while 4 out of every 5 NBS created livelihood opportunities. We conclude that reported uptake of NBS for hydro-meteorological risks in SSA is low. However, there could be more NBS, especially at the local level, that are unreported. Furthermore, NBS can help SSA address major development challenges such as water and food insecurity and unemployment and help the sub-region develop climate-resiliently. We, therefore, recommend that NBS be mainstreamed into urban planning and for knowledge exchange opportunities between SSA and Europe and other regions to be explored to promote uptake.

Mapping ecosystem services: The supply and demand of flood regulation services in Europe

Nexus between nature-based solutions, ecosystem services and urban challenges

Mediterranean agro-silvo-pastoral ecosystems (MAEs) are increasingly affected by water scarcity, rising temperatures, drought, and land-use change, all of which reduce water availability and system resilience. These combined pressures threaten long-term ecological and economic sustainability by contributing to declining profitability, land abandonment, and land degradation. Collectively, these processes reduce ecosystem functions and the capacity for carbon sequestration.The Horizon Europe DRYAD project ("Demonstration and modelling of nature-based solutions to enhance the resilience of Mediterranean agro-silvo-pastoral ecosystems and landscapes") advances current knowledge by designing and implementing evidence-based, scientifically validated, and community-tailored nature-based solutions (NbS) in selected Pilot Demonstration Areas. The project explicitly addresses the hydrological and socio-ecological complexity of MAEs under multiple risk conditions. DRYAD employs an expanded interpretation of NbS, conceptualizing them as an "ecosystem of NbS" that includes intervention-, protection-, management-, and planning-oriented actions functioning in systemic interaction.One of DRYAD’s tasks is to develop a novel, standardized framework addressing a key limitation in current NbS implementation in agro-silvo-pastoral ecosystems: the lack of information, thereby enabling wider upscaling and mainstreaming. The framework, termed NbS Abacus, is implemented through the systematic documentation and evaluation of thirteen NbS using comprehensive fact sheets developed with stakeholder input. Each NbS is assessed against a set of characteristics, including implementation requirements, targeted ecosystem services (classified according to the Common International Classification of Ecosystem Services), expected benefits, potential trade-offs, strengths, constraints, costs, policy relevance, and upscaling potential. While all NbS are multifunctional, they are classified according to their primary ecosystem service focus into water-, soil-, and biodiversity-related interventions.Water-related NbS address key hydrological constraints in MAEs, such as strong precipitation seasonality and prolonged summer droughts. Examples include contour-aligned drainage ditches, dry detention ponds, and artificial ponds. The framework explicitly captures associated risks. These include, e.g., substrate clogging and groundwater contamination from polluted runoff. This enables risk-informed NbS design, implementation, and the selection of appropriate monitoring protocols and indicator sets.MAEs have also experienced increasing degradation driven by contrasting land-use dynamics, notably land abandonment and intensification. Soil-related NbS aim to improve land management efficiency by enhancing soil water retention, fertility, and erosion regulation. Representative examples include adaptive grazing schemes, real-time livestock monitoring systems, and wildfire prevention measures.Climate-induced drought poses a major threat to biodiversity in MAEs. Biodiversity-related NbS aim to restore or conserve ecological functioning through measures such as strategic forestation, agropastoral system reforestation, habitat islands, and remote sensing-based detection of tree decline. The framework accounts for both long-term ecological benefits and short-term socio-economic constraints, including infrastructure requirements, site biophysical limitations, maintenance costs, forage yield reductions, and temporary impacts on livestock productivity.The NbS Abacus supports the uptake of NbS by providing harmonized, practice-oriented information on performance, costs, risks, and scalability. The framework and its NbS catalogue facilitate informed decision-making, replication, and mainstreaming across land management and climate adaptation strategies, with relevance for practitioners, advisors, policy-makers, and planners in Mediterranean and other drought-prone regions.Acknowledgements. This research has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under Grant Agreement No. 101156076 (DRYAD).

The ecosystem services (ES) approach has been widely accepted in environmental policies and management as an adequate platform that can serve as a link between nature and society. Many ES are influenced by the landscape structure. Thus, national-scale landscape mapping can potentially contribute to nature conservation management. However, there are no attempts to directly link the ES assessment with the landscape units at a national level. In this paper, we propose an approach for the transformation of paper copy information from old landscape maps to enable the assessment of ES conservation potential at the national landscape scale. The conceptual scheme of the approach contains three main elements: (i) data acquisition; (ii) landscape and ES assessment data processing; and (iii) mapping of ES potential at a landscape level. The results reveal the landscape heterogeneity based on landscape classification and mapping at a national level and the ES conservation potential based on the analyses of the Natural Heritage (NH) in the country to provide ES. The assessment of ES conservation potential using the national scale landscape mapping allows us to analyze the spatial relationships between the landscapes with high conservation value and the existing nature protection network. The conceptual scheme of the study demonstrates how the results of the ES potential provided by the NH at a national level can be combined with the landscape units from the traditional landscape classification schemes to produce various spatial and statistical metrics that reveal how the national system of protected areas coincides with the areas of high ES conservation value.

This work quantified ecosystem services (ES) and the geographic gross product (GGP) at municipal level in the Metropolitan Region of Buenos Aires (MRBA), Argentina. The ES offer and GGP were evaluated for each land use (extensive agriculture EA, intensive agriculture IA, urban and periurban agriculture UPA, green areas GA, urban use URB), expressed as a percentage (%), at the municipality level. Municipalities with a greater URB percentage (<70) presented an elevated ES offer from GA. In periurban municipalities EA contributed to ES offer more than other vegetated land uses (IA, GA, and UPA). Urban municipalities presented 20% more GGP than periurban municipalities. The GGP was negatively associated with total ES offer (-0.34) and ES offer from EA (-0.46). The identification and quantification of ES and GGP is relevant for achieving an adequate landscape planning and a sustainable environmental and economic use of urban systems.

Assessing ecosystem services in Russia: Case studies from four municipal districts

The planting of forests has been met with both scepticism and support in international forest policy and management fora. Discussions regarding the values of plantations for extrinsic purposes such as timber supply, carbon sequestration, water quality and biodiversity conservation, reveal widely varying opinions across and within different settings. Recent research highlights the role of planted forests in providing multiple ecosystem services to human society. However, there has been little assessment of ecosystems services, partly due to lack of suitable frameworks and evaluation tools. Planted forests generally have low ecosystem services values initially and are more vulnerable to erosion and other impacts of mismanagement than natural forests. Careful monitoring of change in ecosystem services values over time is therefore vital to investors and all stakeholders in plantations. Drawing on lessons derived from ecosystem services assessment for various land use types, here we propose an easy-to-apply framework to assess ecosystem services from planted forests that could be used in various planted forest types around the world. A necessary next step for researchers and practitioners is to test the proposed framework under various settings.