ORCID Profile
0000-0002-3083-8205
Current Organisation
Nanyang Technological University
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Publisher: American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE)
Date: 02-2015
Publisher: Copernicus GmbH
Date: 15-05-2023
DOI: 10.5194/EGUSPHERE-EGU23-16330
Abstract: The world is urbanizing at an unprecedented rate, with the United Nations projecting that 68% of the world& #8217 s population will be living in urban areas by 2050. In Southeast Asia (SEA) region, it is expected that 47% of the population will live in urban areas by 2025. & Urbanization patterns in this region are generally associated with rapid population growth, economic development and competing demands for land. SEA is also a hotspot of tropical deforestation due to rapid urbanization, resulting in detrimental impacts to the environment and associated ecosystem services. For ex le, changes in vegetation due to land use/ land cover (LULC) change impact the thermal environment. The objectives of this study are to i) calculate the land cover changes between 2000 and 2020 for 20 major SEA urban clusters ii) characterise the change in urban form within SEA urban clusters via landscape metrics used at the neighbourhood-scale iii) determine the relationship between landscape metrics and urban heat measured by LST and iv) determine the relationship between landscape metrics and vegetation indices such as NDVI and EVI. Documenting the LULC transitions (2000 & #8211 2020) and the associated impacts on urban heat and vegetation changes can help inform policy, sustainable land management and ecosystem services management using Nature based Solutions. We discuss the results per country, contrasting results for major cities and secondary cities, which show different changes in landscape.&
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 11-05-2015
DOI: 10.1002/HYP.10475
Publisher: American Geophysical Union (AGU)
Date: 04-2017
DOI: 10.1002/2016WR019691
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 16-04-2022
DOI: 10.1007/S00267-021-01467-W
Abstract: In Southeast Asia, projections of rapid urban growth coupled with high water-related risks call for large investments in infrastructure—including in blue–green infrastructure (BGI) such as forests, parks, or vegetated engineered systems. However, most of the knowledge on BGI is produced in the global North, overlooking the ersity of urban contexts globally. Here, we review the literature on BGI for flood risk mitigation and water quality improvement in Southeast Asian cities to understand the scope of practical knowledge and identify research needs. We searched for evidence of local types of BGI in peer-reviewed and grey literature and assessed the performance of BGI based on hydrological, societal, and environmental metrics. The body of literature on BGI in Southeast Asia is small and dominated by wealthier countries but we found evidence of uptake among researchers and practitioners in most countries. Bioretention systems, constructed wetlands, and green cover received the most attention in research. Evidence from modelling and laboratory studies confirmed the potential for BGI to address flooding and water quality issues in the region. However, practical knowledge to mainstream the implementation of BGI remains limited, with insufficient primary hydrological data and information on societal and environmental impacts. In addition, the performance of BGI in combination with grey infrastructure, under climate change, or in informal settlements is poorly studied. Future research and practice should focus on producing and sharing empirical data, ultimately increasing the regional knowledge base to promote efficient BGI strategies.
Publisher: MDPI AG
Date: 05-01-2021
DOI: 10.3390/LAND10010040
Abstract: Urban blue-green spaces hold immense potential for supporting the sustainability and liveability of cities through the provision of urban ecosystem services (UES). However, research on UES in the Global South has not been reviewed as systematically as in the Global North. In Southeast Asia, the nature and extent of the biases, imbalances and gaps in UES research are unclear. We address this issue by conducting a systematic review of UES research in Southeast Asia over the last twenty years. Our findings draw attention to the unequal distribution of UES research within the region, and highlight common services, scales and features studied, as well as methods undertaken in UES research. We found that while studies tend to assess regulating and cultural UES at a landscape scale, few studies examined interactions between services by assessing synergies and tradeoffs. Moreover, the bias in research towards megacities in the region may overlook less-developed nations, rural areas, and peri-urban regions and their unique perspectives and preferences towards UES management. We discuss the challenges and considerations for integrating and conducting research on UES in Southeast Asia based on its unique and erse socio-cultural characteristics. We conclude our review by highlighting aspects of UES research that need more attention in order to support land use planning and decision-making in Southeast Asia.
Publisher: MDPI AG
Date: 10-11-2014
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 2018
DOI: 10.1016/J.SCITOTENV.2017.08.092
Abstract: A wide variety of tools aim to support decision making by modelling, mapping and quantifying ecosystem services. If decisions are to be properly informed, the accuracy and potential limitations of these tools must be well understood. However, dedicated studies evaluating ecosystem service models against empirical data are rare, especially over large areas. In this paper, we report on the national-scale assessment of a new ecosystem service model for nutrient delivery and retention, the InVEST Nutrient Delivery Ratio model. For 36 river catchments across the UK, we modelled total catchment export of phosphorus (P) and/or nitrogen (N) and compared model outputs to measurements derived from empirical water chemistry data. The model performed well in terms of relative magnitude of nutrient export among catchments (best Spearman's rank correlation for N and P, respectively: 0.81 and 0.88). However, there was wide variation among catchments in the accuracy of the model, and absolute values of nutrient exports frequently showed high percentage differences between modelled and empirically-derived exports (best median absolute percentage difference for N and P, respectively: ±64%, ±44%). The model also showed a high degree of sensitivity to nutrient loads and hydrologic routing input parameters and these sensitivities varied among catchments. These results suggest that the InVEST model can provide valuable information on nutrient fluxes to decision makers, especially in terms of relative differences among catchments. However, caution is needed if using the absolute modelled values for decision-making. Our study also suggests particular attention should be paid to researching input nutrient loadings and retentions, and the selection of appropriate input data resolutions and threshold flow accumulation values. Our results also highlight how availability of empirical data can improve model calibration and performance assessment and reinforce the need to include such data in ecosystem service modelling studies.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 04-2013
Publisher: Springer Singapore
Date: 2017
Publisher: Frontiers Media SA
Date: 24-06-2021
DOI: 10.3389/FENVS.2021.601136
Abstract: Globally, cities face massive environmental and societal challenges such as rapid population growth and climate change. In response, natural infrastructure is increasingly recognized for its potential to enhance resilience and improve human well-being. Here, we examine the role of the ecosystem services and resilience approaches in urban planning, which both aim to sustain the long-term benefits of natural infrastructure in cities. While the two approaches are intertwined and share deep roots in social-ecological systems framing, they confer complementary strengths in practice, which we illustrate with a case study in the San Francisco Bay Area, United States. We show that, at present, the main strength of ecosystem service practice is to provide actionable information, while urban resilience practice supports the development of holistic long-term strategies. We discuss operational limitations of both approaches and suggest that understanding and leveraging their complementary strengths could help bridge the implementation gap between research and practice in urban natural infrastructure planning.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 27-11-2017
DOI: 10.1002/ECO.1921
Publisher: IWA Publishing
Date: 03-12-2014
DOI: 10.2166/WST.2013.772
Abstract: Stormwater management strategies increasingly recognise the need to emulate the pre-development flow regime, in addition to reducing pollutant concentrations and loads. However, it is unclear whether current design approaches for stormwater source-control techniques are effective in restoring the whole flow regime, and in particular low flows, towards their pre-development levels. We therefore modelled and compared a range of source-control stormwater management strategies, including some specifically tailored towards enhancing baseflow processes. The strategies were assessed based on the total streamflow volume and three low flow metrics. Strategies based on harvesting tanks showed much greater volume reduction than those based on raingardens. Strategies based on a low flow rate release, aimed at mimicking natural baseflow, failed to completely restore the baseflow regime. We also found that the sensitivity of the low flow metrics to the proportion of catchment treated varied amongst metrics, illustrating the importance of metrics selection in the assessment of stormwater strategies. In practice, our results suggest that realistic scenarios using low flow release from source-control techniques may not be able to fully restore the low flow regime, at least for perennial streams. However, a combination of feasibly-sized tanks and raingardens is likely to restore the baseflow regime to a great extent, while also benefitting water quality through the retention and filtration processes.
Publisher: Copernicus GmbH
Date: 11-09-2023
Publisher: American Geophysical Union (AGU)
Date: 05-2014
DOI: 10.1002/2014WR015497
Publisher: Copernicus GmbH
Date: 11-09-2023
Publisher: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Date: 10-11-2020
DOI: 10.1101/2020.11.09.373779
Abstract: Urban green infrastructure, especially trees, are widely regarded as one of the most effective ways to reducing urban temperatures in extreme heat events, and alleviate its adverse impacts on human health and well-being. Nevertheless, urban planners and decision-makers are still lacking methods and tools to spatially evaluate the cooling effects of urban green spaces and exploit them to assess greening strategies at the urban agglomeration scale. This article introduces a novel spatially-explicit approach to simulate urban greening scenarios by increasing the tree canopy cover in the existing urban fabric, and evaluating their heat mitigation potential. The latter is achieved by applying the InVEST urban cooling model to the synthetic land use/land cover maps generated for the greening scenarios. A case study in the urban agglomeration of Lausanne, Switzerland, illustrates the development of tree canopy scenarios following distinct spatial distribution strategies. The spatial pattern of the tree canopy strongly influences the human exposure to the highest temperatures, and small increases in the abundance of tree canopy cover with the appropriate spatial configuration can have major impacts on human health and well-being. The proposed approach supports urban planning and the design of nature-based solutions to enhance climate resilience.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 2013
Publisher: IOP Publishing
Date: 27-09-2021
Abstract: Urban sprawl impacts are critical in the evaluation of planning decisions and often monitored by indicators of soil sealing. In France, these indicators are required by law to be reported in environmental assessments of planning documents. Although monitoring of soil sealing is important to limit environmental impacts, focusing on this sole dimension in urban planning can be reductive. In this paper, we explore to what extent ecosystem services (ES) indicators, measuring the benefits to humans provided by healthy ecosystems, are captured by soil sealing indicators by comparing their temporal and spatial evolutions. Through consulting with urban planning stakeholders, we model and map the spatial and temporal evolutions over a 35 year period of soil sealing and eight priority ES in the Paris metropolitan area (agricultural potential, groundwater recharge, global climate regulation, water quality regulation through nutrient retention, urban heat mitigation, flood mitigation, recreational potential and natural heritage). We highlight the spatial and temporal matches and mismatches between the two types of indicators (ES and soil sealing) and demonstrate that a large part of ES variations are not well captured by soil sealing indicators in time and space (spatial match with the eight ES is only found for 10% of the Paris metropolitan area). This calls for finer, ES-based, diagnosis in land use planning that could usefully illuminate the gains and losses related to land use and land management policies by taking into account the environmental and societal impacts of urban sprawl.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 24-10-2014
DOI: 10.1002/HYP.10069
Publisher: MDPI AG
Date: 24-07-2021
DOI: 10.3390/W13152027
Abstract: This paper presents the advantages and opportunities for rapid preliminary intervention screening to enhance inclusion of green infrastructures in regional scale stormwater management. Stormwater flooding is widely recognised as a significant and worsening natural hazard across the globe however, current management approaches aimed at the site scale do not adequately explore opportunities for integrated management at the regional scale at which decisions are made. This research addresses this gap through supporting the development of stormwater management strategies, including green infrastructure, at a regional scale. This is achieved through upscaling a modelling approach using a spatially explicit inundation model (CADDIES) coupled with an economic model of inundation loss (OpenProFIA) to support widescale evaluation of green infrastructure during the informative early-stage development of stormwater management strategies. This novel regional scale approach is demonstrated across a case study of the San Francisco Bay Area, spanning 8300 sq km. The main opportunity from this regional approach is to identify spatial and temporal trends which are used to inform regional planning and direct future detailed modelling efforts. The study highlights several limitations of the new method, suggesting it should be applied as part of a suite of landscape management approaches however, highlights that it has the potential to complement existing stormwater management toolkits.
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 09-06-2022
DOI: 10.1038/S42949-022-00056-Y
Abstract: Globally, rising seas threaten massive numbers of people and significant infrastructure. Adaptation strategies increasingly incorporate nature-based solutions. New science can illuminate where these solutions are appropriate in urban environments and what benefits they provide to people. Together with stakeholders in San Mateo County, California, USA, we co-developed nature-based solutions to support adaptation planning. We created six guiding principles to shape planning, summarized vulnerability to sea-level rise and opportunities for nature-based solutions, created three adaptation scenarios, and compared multiple benefits provided by each scenario. Adaptation scenarios that included investments in nature-based solutions deliver up to eight times the benefits of a traditionally engineered baseline as well as additional habitat for key species. The magnitude and distribution of benefits varied at subregional scales along the coastline. Our results demonstrate practical tools and engagement approaches to assessing the multiple benefits of nature-based solutions in an urban estuary that can be replicated in other regions.
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 22-05-2017
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 03-07-2023
DOI: 10.1007/S11625-023-01341-0
Abstract: Freshwater ecosystems are exceptionally rich in bio ersity and provide essential benefits to people. Yet they are disproportionately threatened compared to terrestrial and marine systems and remain underrepresented in the scenarios and models used for global environmental assessments. The Nature Futures Framework (NFF) has recently been proposed to advance the contribution of scenarios and models for environmental assessments. This framework places the erse relationships between people and nature at its core, identifying three value perspectives as points of departure: Nature for Nature, Nature for Society, and Nature as Culture. We explore how the NFF may be implemented for improved assessment of freshwater ecosystems. First, we outline how the NFF and its main value perspectives can be translated to freshwater systems and explore what desirable freshwater futures would look like from each of the above perspectives. Second, we review scenario strategies and current models to examine how freshwater modelling can be linked to the NFF in terms of its aims and outcomes. In doing so, we also identify which aspects of the NFF framework are not yet captured in current freshwater models and suggest possible ways to bridge them. Our analysis provides future directions for a more holistic freshwater model and scenario development and demonstrates how society can benefit from freshwater modelling efforts that are integrated with the value-perspectives of the NFF. Graphical abstract
Publisher: Copernicus GmbH
Date: 06-02-2015
Abstract: Abstract. There is an increasing demand for assessment of water provisioning ecosystem services. While simple models with low data and expertise requirements are attractive, their use as decision-aid tools should be supported by uncertainty characterization. We assessed the performance of the InVEST annual water yield model, a popular tool for ecosystem service assessment based on the Budyko hydrological framework. Our study involved the comparison of 10 subcatchments ranging in size and land-use configuration, in the Cape Fear basin, North Carolina. We analyzed the model sensitivity to climate variables and input parameters, and the structural error associated with the use of the Budyko framework, a lumped (catchment-scale) model theory, in a spatially explicit way. Comparison of model predictions with observations and with the lumped model predictions confirmed that the InVEST model is able to represent differences in land uses and therefore in the spatial distribution of water provisioning services. Our results emphasize the effect of climate input errors, especially annual precipitation, and errors in the ecohydrological parameter Z, which are both comparable to the model structure uncertainties. Our case study supports the use of the model for predicting land-use change effect on water provisioning, although its use for identifying areas of high water yield will be influenced by precipitation errors. While some results are context-specific, our study provides general insights and methods to help identify the regions and decision contexts where the model predictions may be used with confidence.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 14-09-2017
DOI: 10.1002/HYP.11298
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 21-06-2021
DOI: 10.1038/S42949-021-00027-9
Abstract: Natural infrastructure such as parks, forests, street trees, green roofs, and coastal vegetation is central to sustainable urban management. Despite recent progress, it remains challenging for urban decision-makers to incorporate the benefits of natural infrastructure into urban design and planning. Here, we present an approach to support the greening of cities by quantifying and mapping the erse benefits of natural infrastructure for now and in the future. The approach relies on open-source tools, within the InVEST (Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Tradeoffs) software, that compute biophysical and socio-economic metrics relevant to a variety of decisions in data-rich or data-scarce contexts. Through three case studies in China, France, and the United States, we show how spatially explicit information about the benefits of nature enhances urban management by improving economic valuation, prioritizing land use change, and promoting inclusive planning and stakeholder dialogue. We discuss limitations of the tools, including modeling uncertainties and a limited suite of output metrics, and propose research directions to mainstream natural infrastructure information in integrated urban management.
Publisher: IOP Publishing
Date: 07-2016
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 03-09-2017
DOI: 10.1111/GCB.13457
Abstract: Climate change is having a significant impact on ecosystem services and is likely to become increasingly important as this phenomenon intensifies. Future impacts can be difficult to assess as they often involve long timescales, dynamic systems with high uncertainties, and are typically confounded by other drivers of change. Despite a growing literature on climate change impacts on ecosystem services, no quantitative syntheses exist. Hence, we lack an overarching understanding of the impacts of climate change, how they are being assessed, and the extent to which other drivers, uncertainties, and decision making are incorporated. To address this, we systematically reviewed the peer-reviewed literature that assesses climate change impacts on ecosystem services at subglobal scales. We found that the impact of climate change on most types of services was predominantly negative (59% negative, 24% mixed, 4% neutral, 13% positive), but varied across services, drivers, and assessment methods. Although uncertainty was usually incorporated, there were substantial gaps in the sources of uncertainty included, along with the methods used to incorporate them. We found that relatively few studies integrated decision making, and even fewer studies aimed to identify solutions that were robust to uncertainty. For management or policy to ensure the delivery of ecosystem services, integrated approaches that incorporate multiple drivers of change and account for multiple sources of uncertainty are needed. This is undoubtedly a challenging task, but ignoring these complexities can result in misleading assessments of the impacts of climate change, suboptimal management outcomes, and the inefficient allocation of resources for climate adaptation.
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
Date: 08-08-2023
Publisher: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Date: 14-05-2021
Abstract: Nature underpins human well-being in critical ways, especially in health. Nature provides pollination of nutritious crops, purification of drinking water, protection from floods, and climate security, among other well-studied health benefits. A crucial, yet challenging, research frontier is clarifying how nature promotes physical activity for its many mental and physical health benefits, particularly in densely populated cities with scarce and dwindling access to nature. Here we frame this frontier by conceptually developing a spatial decision-support tool that shows where, how, and for whom urban nature promotes physical activity, to inform urban greening efforts and broader health assessments. We synthesize what is known, present a model framework, and detail the model steps and data needs that can yield generalizable spatial models and an effective tool for assessing the urban nature–physical activity relationship. Current knowledge supports an initial model that can distinguish broad trends and enrich urban planning, spatial policy, and public health decisions. New, iterative research and application will reveal the importance of different types of urban nature, the different subpopulations who will benefit from it, and nature’s potential contribution to creating more equitable, green, livable cities with active inhabitants.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 08-2015
DOI: 10.1016/J.SCITOTENV.2015.04.027
Abstract: There is a growing call for ecosystem services models that are both simple and scientifically credible, in order to serve public and private sector decision-making processes. Sediment retention receives particular interest given the impact of this service on water quality. We developed a new version of the sediment retention model for the InVEST (Integrated Valuation of Environmental Services and Tradeoffs) tool to address previous limitations and facilitate model uncertainty assessment. We tested the model in the Cape Fear basin, North Carolina (NC), performing sensitivity analyses and assessing its ability to detect the spatial variability in sediment retention service for eight subcatchments. The main advantages of the revised model include the use of spatially-explicit, globally available input data, and the explicit consideration of hydrological connectivity in the landscape. The sensitivity analyses in the study catchment identified the erosivity and erodibility factors, together with the cover factor for agricultural land as the most influential parameter for sediment export. Relative predictions, representing the spatial variability in sediment exports, were correctly represented by the model. Absolute sediment exports were also highly correlated with observations, although their interpretation for socio-economic assessments is more uncertain without local knowledge of the dominant erosion processes. This work confirms that the sediment connectivity approach used in the revised InVEST model has great potential to quantify the sediment retention service. Although resources to conduct model calibration and testing are typically scarce, these practices should be encouraged to improve model interpretation and for confident application in different decision-making contexts. Without calibration, the InVEST sediment model still provides relevant information for ecosystem services assessments, especially in decision contexts that involve ranking of sediment export areas, such as spatial prioritization of conservation, development or restoration activities, taking into account non-linear sediment responses to changes in land use.
Publisher: Copernicus GmbH
Date: 10-02-2015
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 02-2017
DOI: 10.1016/J.SCITOTENV.2016.12.103
Abstract: Geospatial models are commonly used to quantify sediment contributions at the watershed scale. However, the sensitivity of these models to variation in hydrological and geomorphological features, in particular to land use and topography data, remains uncertain. Here, we assessed the performance of one such model, the InVEST sediment delivery model, for six sites comprising a total of 28 watersheds varying in area (6-13,500km
Publisher: American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
Date: 11-10-2019
Abstract: A recent Global Assessment by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Bio ersity and Ecosystem Services has emphasized the urgent need to determine where and how nature's contribution matters most to people. Chaplin-Kramer et al. have developed a globalscale modeling of ecosystem services, focusing on water quality regulation, coastal protection, and crop pollination (see the Perspective by Balvanera). By 2050, up to 5 billion people may be at risk from diminishing ecosystem services, particularly in Africa and South Asia. Science , this issue p. 255 see also p. 184
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 02-2020
DOI: 10.1016/J.SCITOTENV.2019.135871
Abstract: Investments in watershed services programs hold the promise to protect and restore ecosystems and water resources. The design and implementation of such programs is often accompanied by hydrologic modeling and monitoring, although the role of hydrologic information in meeting the needs of program managers remains unclear. In the Camboriú watershed, Brazil, we explored the value of hydrologic modeling and monitoring with respect to two dimensions: scientific credibility and use of generated knowledge in the design, implementation, and evaluation of the watershed management program. We used a combination of semi-structured interviews, focus groups, and hydrologic modeling under various levels of data availability to examine when improved models and data availability might build credibility and provide more useful information for decision makers. We found that hydrologic information was not actually used for the detailed design, but rather contributed to broad-scale support of the program by increasing scientific credibility. Model sophistication and data availability improved the credibility of hydrologic information but did not affect actual decisions related to program design. Hydrologic monitoring data were critical for model calibration, and high-resolution land use and land cover data, obtained via remote sensing, affected some model outputs which were not used to design the program. Our study suggests that identifying how hydrologic data will inform decision making should guide the level of effort used in hydrologic modeling and monitoring.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 04-2017
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 21-04-2017
DOI: 10.1038/NCOMMS15065
Abstract: International corporations in an increasingly globalized economy exert a major influence on the planet’s land use and resources through their product design and material sourcing decisions. Many companies use life cycle assessment (LCA) to evaluate their sustainability, yet commonly-used LCA methodologies lack the spatial resolution and predictive ecological information to reveal key impacts on climate, water and bio ersity. We present advances for LCA that integrate spatially explicit modelling of land change and ecosystem services in a Land-Use Change Improved (LUCI)-LCA. Comparing increased demand for bioplastics derived from two alternative feedstock-location scenarios for maize and sugarcane, we find that the LUCI-LCA approach yields results opposite to those of standard LCA for greenhouse gas emissions and water consumption, and of different magnitudes for soil erosion and bio ersity. This approach highlights the importance of including information about where and how land-use change and related impacts will occur in supply chain and innovation decisions.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 07-2016
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 16-09-2021
DOI: 10.1002/IEAM.4511
Abstract: Nature‐based solutions (NBS) are an increasingly popular approach to water resources management, with a growing number of projects designed to take advantage of landscape effects on water flow. As NBS for water are developed, producing hydrologic information to inform decisions often requires substantial investment in data acquisition and modeling for this effort to be worthwhile, the information generated must be useful and used. We apply an evaluation framework of salience (type of information), credibility (quality of information), and legitimacy (trustworthiness of information) to assess how hydrologic modeling outputs have been used in NBS projects by three types of decision makers: advocates, implementers, and analysts. Our findings, based on documents and interviews with watershed management programs in South America currently implementing NBS, consider how hydrologic modeling supports two types of decisions for NBS projects: quantifying the hydrologic impact of potential and existing NBS and prioritizing where NBS might be sited within a watershed. To help inform future modeling studies, we identify several problematic assumptions that analysts may make about the credibility of modeled outputs for NBS when advocates and implementers are not effectively engaged. We find that salient, credible, and legitimate results in applications evaluating NBS for water are not always generated in the absence of clear communication and engagement. Integr Environ Assess Manag 2022 :135–147. © 2021 The Authors. Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Society of Environmental Toxicology & Chemistry (SETAC).
Publisher: Copernicus GmbH
Date: 15-05-2023
DOI: 10.5194/EGUSPHERE-EGU23-4594
Abstract: Systems such as green roofs, constructed wetlands and green open spaces can play important roles in adapting to climate change. While it is generally accepted that these systems increase our resilience to heatwaves and floods, more research is necessary to identify context-appropriate indicators to monitor the short- and long-term benefits of nature-based solutions. This is particularly important in the context of informal settlements, areas characterised by a reduced access to infrastructure and resources, and often more vulnerable and exposed to environmental hazards. In order to assess the effects of nature-based solutions in informal settlements, we review and select indicators of resilience from the literature of ecosystem services and apply them to two case studies of climate resilience-building projects in Bangkok (Thailand) and in Honiara (Solomon Islands). The projects include community gardens, tree planting and riverine vegetation restoration initiatives. Based on interviews with the implementers, we interrogate how each project selected and implemented nature-based solutions and infer a series of indicators that can be used to measure the process of using nature-based solutions to strengthen resilience. We identify, for each of the cases, indicators that assess (i) the physical extent of nature-based solutions, (ii) the provision of resilience-related ecosystem services and (iii) the benefits of these services to the community. Based on the indicators, we propose a monitoring framework for each of the projects to evaluate if and how the interventions improved climate resilience in the long term. Drawing on the lessons from these two case studies, we stress the importance of monitoring and assessing the effects of nature-based solutions using context-appropriate indicators of ecosystem services and resilience. Furthermore, we highlight challenges for monitoring of community gardens and riparian revegetation initiatives, given that such systems often affect multiple social, economic and environmental aspects of resilience. These findings contribute to a growing body of knowledge of ex les of how nature-based solutions can be assessed, monitored and modified to better respond to the effects of climate change in the Asia-Pacific region.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 09-2021
Location: United States of America
No related grants have been discovered for Perrine Hamel.