Background
Combined impacts from anthropogenic pressures and climate change threaten coastal ecosystems and their capacity to protect communities from hazards. One approach towards improving coastal protection is to implement “nature-based solutions” (NBS), which are actions working with nature to benefit nature and humans. Despite recent increases in global implementation of NBS projects for coastal protection, substantial gaps exist in our understanding of NBS performance. To help fill this gap, we systematically mapped the global evidence base on the ecological, physical, economic, and social performance of NBS interventions related to coastal protection. We focused on active NBS interventions, such as restoring or creating habitat, adding structure, or modifying sediment in six shallow biogenic ecosystems: salt marsh, seagrass, kelp forest, mangrove, coral reef, and shellfish reef.
Methods
We identified potentially relevant articles on the performance of NBS for coastal protection using predefined and tested search strategies across two indexing platforms, one bibliographic database, two open discovery citation indexes, one web-based search engine, and a novel literature discovery tool. We also searched 45 organizational websites for literature and solicited literature from 66 subject matter experts. Potentially relevant articles were deduplicated and then screened by title and abstract with assistance from a machine learning algorithm. Following title and abstract screening, we conducted full text screening, extracted relevant metadata into a predefined codebook, and analyzed the evidence base to determine the distribution and abundance of evidence and answer our research questions on NBS performance.
Results
Our search captured > 37,000 articles, of which 252 met our eligibility criteria for relevance to NBS performance for coastal protection and were included in the systematic map. Evidence stemmed from 31 countries and increased from the 1980s through the 2020s. Active NBS interventions for coastal protection were most often implemented in salt marshes (45%), mangrove forests (26%), and shellfish reefs (20%), whereas there were fewer NBS studies in seagrass meadows (4%), coral reefs (4%), or kelp beds (< 1%). Performance evaluations of NBS were typically conducted using observational or experimental methods at local spatial scales and over short temporal scales (< 1 year to 5 years). Evidence clusters existed for several types of NBS interventions, including restoration and addition of structures (e.g., those consisting of artificial, hybrid, or natural materials), yet evidence gaps existed for NBS interventions like alteration of invasive species. Evaluations of NBS performance commonly focused on ecological (e.g., species and population, habitat, community) and physical (e.g., waves, sediment and morphology) outcomes, whereas pronounced evidence gaps existed for economic (e.g., living standards, capital) and social (e.g., basic infrastructure, health) outcomes.
Conclusions
This systematic map highlights evidence clusters and evidence gaps related to the performance of active NBS interventions for coastal protection in shallow, biogenic ecosystems. The synthesized evidence base will help guide future research and management of NBS for coastal protection so that active interventions can be designed, sited, constructed, monitored, and adaptively managed to maximize co-benefits. Promising avenues for future research and management initiatives include implementing broad-scale spatial and temporal monitoring of NBS in multidisciplinary teams to examine not only ecological and physical outcomes but also economic and social outcomes, as well as conducting further synthesis on evidence clusters that may reveal measures of effect for specific NBS interventions. Since NBS can deliver multiple benefits, measuring a diverse suite of response variables, especially those related to ecosystem function, as well as social and economic responses, may help justify and improve societal benefits of NBS. Such an approach can help ensure that NBS can be strategically harnessed and managed to meet coastal protection goals and provide co-benefits for nature and people.
