Investing in Natural and Nature-Based Infrastructure: Building Better Along Our Coasts

Abstract

Much of the United States' critical infrastructure is either aging or requires significant repair, leaving U.S. communities and the economy vulnerable. Outdated and dilapidated infrastructure places coastal communities, in particular, at risk from the increasingly frequent and intense coastal storm events and rising sea levels. Therefore, investments in coastal infrastructure are urgently needed to ensure community safety and prosperity; however, these investments should not jeopardize the ecosystems and natural resources that underlie economic wealth and human well-being. Over the past 50 years, efforts have been made to integrate built infrastructure with natural landscape features, often termed "green" infrastructure, in order to sustain and restore valuable ecosystem functions and services. For example, significant advances have been made in implementing green infrastructure approaches for stormwater management, wastewater treatment, and drinking water conservation and delivery. However, the implementation of natural and nature-based infrastructure (NNBI) aimed at flood prevention and coastal erosion protection is lagging. There is an opportunity now, as the U.S. government reacts to the recent, unprecedented flooding and hurricane damage and considers greater infrastructure investments, to incorporate NNBI into coastal infrastructure projects. Doing so will increase resilience and provide critical services to local communities in a cost-effective manner and thereby help to sustain a growing economy.

Understanding the value and limits of nature-based solutions to climate change and other global challenges

“…NbS vary in three important ways, which influence the range of benefits that they provide for people. (i) They cover a spectrum of interventions from protecting or restoring diverse natural ecosystems to creating new managed or hybrid 'grey-green' approaches [15]. While healthy natural forests, grasslands and wetlands may store more carbon than their managed equivalents (e.g.…”

Living shorelines enhanced the resilience of saltmarshes to Hurricane Matthew (2016)

“…An impediment to this promotion is that data on living shoreline resilience to hurricane impacts (as directly compared to traditional hardened shorelines) are extremely limited (Sutton‐Grier et al. , but see Gittman et al. ).…”

“…Living shorelines have been shown to enhance services like wave amelioration, carbon sequestration, and nursery provision for juvenile fish (Scyphers et al 2011, Davis et al 2015, Gittman et al 2016a), but successful promotion of living shorelines as an alternative to hardened shorelines will likely rely on demonstrating their effectiveness and durability first, and then promoting their ecological advantages as co-benefits (Scyphers et al 2015, Smith et al 2017). An impediment to this promotion is that data on living shoreline resilience to hurricane impacts (as directly compared to traditional hardened shorelines) are extremely limited (Sutton-Grier et al 2018, but see Gittman et al 2014. Accordingly, in this study we evaluated the resilience of living shorelines compared to bulkheads and natural marshes over the course of two years (2015)(2016)(2017), including before and after Hurricane Matthew (2016).…”

Enhancing the Ecological Value of Sea Dikes

“…Due to spatial and temporal variation in ecosystems and not yet resolved knowledge gaps, integration of coastal protection services of ecosystems in design processes still poses a challenge [45,46]. However, combining hard coastal structures with foreshore ecosystems can decrease the hydrodynamic loads on the built infrastructure, thus increasing the design life and reducing necessary maintenance efforts [8,37,47].…”

“…The integration of ecosystem-based engineering in the foreshore, e.g., with natural ecosystems or nature-based breakwaters in the form of reefs, allows for ecological enhancement and decreased hydraulic loads at the dike structure [8,47]. The target species has to be chosen according to boundary conditions, such as climate, salinity, exposure to hydrodynamic loads, submergence time and substrate [8].…”