Blue and Green Infrastructures (B&GI) are nature-based solutions considered as particularly efficient to reduce the potential impact of new and existing developments with respect to stormwater issues. In order to assess their performance at some large scales compatible with urban projects, adapted distributed rainfall-runoff models are required. The latest advancements of the Multi-Hydro platform have made possible the representation of such B&GI.

In many countries in the European Union (EU), the popularity of communal urban gardening (CUG) on allotments and community gardens is on the rise. Given the role of this practice in increasing urban resilience, most notably social resilience, municipalities in the Global North are promoting CUG as a nature-based solution (NbS). However, the mechanisms by which institutional actors can best support and facilitate CUG are understudied, which could create a gap between aspiration and reality.

Increasing urbanisation, changing disease scenarios, and current predictions of climate change impacts require innovative strategies for providing healthy and sustainable cities, now and in the future. The recently coined concept, Nature-based solutions (NBS), is one such strategy referring to actions that are inspired by, supported by, or copied from nature, designed to address a range of environmental challenges.

Spatial planning has to deal with trade-offs between various stakeholders’ wishes and needs as part of planning and management of landscapes, natural resources and/or biodiversity. To make ecosystem services (ES) trade-off research more relevant for spatial planning, we propose an analytical framework, which puts stakeholders, their land-use/management choices, their impact on ES and responses at the centre. Based on 24 cases from around the world, we used this framing to analyse the appearance and diversity of real-world ES trade-offs.

We considered the limnological literature for an overview of biomanipulation methods that were implemented to avoid or reduce cyanobacterial bloom development in ponds and lakes. For this purpose, we reviewed 48 publications representing 34 whole-lake and large-scale case studies of different biomanipulation approaches clearly mentioning the extent of a cyanobacteria bloom problem and the cyanobacteria taxa involved.

Urban and peri-urban forests are recognized as basic elements for Nature-Based Solutions (NBS), as they preserve and may increase environmental quality in urbanized contexts. For this reason, the amount of forest land per inhabitant is a pivotal efficiency indicator to be considered in the sustainable governance, land management, planning and design of metropolitan areas. The present study illustrates a multivariate analysis of per-capita forest area (PFA) in mainland Attica, the urban region surrounding Athens, Greece.

Wetlands are often considered as nature-based solutions that can provide a multitude of services of great social, economic and environmental value to humankind. Changes in land-use, water-use and climate can all impact wetland functions and services. These changes occur at scales extending well beyond the local scale of an individual wetland. However, in practical applications, engineering and management decisions usually focus on individual wetland projects and local site conditions.

Land use is a main driver for changes in supply and demand of regulating ecosystem services (ES). Most current ES inventories are static and do not address dynamics of ES supply resulting from historic and future land use change. This paper analyzes the role of land use change for the supply of two regulating services, flood regulation and climate regulation, in the European Union (EU) for the period between 1900 and 2000 as well as for four plausible scenarios of future land use change up to 2040.

Seagrass global distribution has declined in the last decades due to many causes, and the implementation of recovery programmes as well as the development of new restoration techniques are needed. This work describes the development of an innovative restoration measure to enhance Zostera marina (eelgrass) seed germination and seedling survival in sediments inhabited by lugworms (Arenicola marina) and its validation in mesocosm experiments.

Nature-based solutions, such as living shorelines, have the potential to restore critical ecosystems, enhance coastal sustainability, and increase resilience to natural disasters; however, their efficacy during storm events compared to traditional hardened shorelines is largely untested. This is a major impediment to their implementation and promotion to policy-makers and homeowners.