Search

While held to be a means for climate change adaptation and mitigation, nature-based solutions (NbS) themselves are vulnerable to climate change. To find ways of compensating for this vulnerability we combine a focused literature review on how information technology has been used to strengthen positive social–ecological–technological feedback, with the development of a prototype decision-support tool. Guided by the literature review, the tool integrates recent advances in using globally available remote sensing data to elicit information on functional diversity and ecosystem service provisioning with information on human service demand and population vulnerability. When combined, these variables can inform climate change adaptation strategies grounded in local social–ecological realities. This type of integrated monitoring and packaging information to be actionable have potential to support NbS management and local knowledge building for context-tailored solutions to societal challenges in urban environments.

Context Urban densification has been argued to increase the contrast between built up and open green space. This contrast may offer a starting point for assessing the extent and magnitude of the positive influences urban green infrastructure is expected to have on its surroundings. Objectives Drawing on insights from landscape ecology and urban geography, this exploratory study investigates how the combined properties of green and grey urban infrastructures determine the influence of urban green infrastructure on the overall quality of the urban landscape. Methods This article uses distance rise-or-decay functions to describe how receptive different land uses are to the influence of neighbouring green spaces, and does this based on integrated information on urban morphology, land surface temperature and habitat use by breeding birds. Results Our results show how green space has a non-linear and declining cooling influence on adjacent urban land uses, extending up to 300-400 m in densely built up areas and up to 500 m in low density areas. Further, we found a statistically significant declining impact of green space on bird species richness up to 500 m outside its boundaries. Conclusions Our focus on land use combinations and interrelations paves the way for a number of new joint landscape level assessments of direct and indirect accessibility to different ecosystem services. Our early results reinforce the challenging need to retain more green space in densely built up part of cities.

Nature-based solutions (NBS) for mitigating climate change are gaining popularity. The number of NBS is increasing, but research gaps still exist at the governance level. The objectives of this paper are (i) to give an overview of the implemented NBS for flood risk management and mitigation in Germany, (ii) to identify governance models that are applied, and (iii) to explore the differences between these models. The results of a hierarchical clustering procedure and a qualitative analysis show that while no one-size-fits-all governance model exists, polycentricism is an important commonality between the projects. The study concludes by highlighting the need for further research on traditional governance model reconversion and paradigm changes. We expect the findings to identify what has worked in the past, as well as what is important for the implementation of NBS for flood risk management in future projects.