What is guidance on nature-based solutions?

Environmental managers are increasingly coping with diverse challenges ranging from biodiversity loss and climate change to invasive species and aging infrastructure. These overlapping forms of global change have compelled the need for strategies that embrace ecological outcomes alongside society’s needs for working landscapes. Nature-based solutions (NBS) have emerged as a key pathway for addressing multiple objectives in parallel. NBS, also known as natural or green infrastructure, have been defined through multiple disciplinary and organizational lenses (e.g., United Nations, IUCN). For practical purposes, however, NBS can be thought of as having four properties (McKay et al. 2023), not all of which may be met by all features: (1) NBS provide infrastructure functions and services, (2) they consist at least in part of biotic components, (3) features are designed intentionally to address environmental and social outcomes, and (4) they foster resilience through self-organization.

Nature-based solutions include a broad spectrum of activities (Van Rees et al., 2023 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences).

Nature-based solutions include a broad spectrum of activities (Van Rees et al., 2023 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences).

Designers and engineers implementing NBS projects often rely on a variety of forms of technical guidance when excuting these projects. However, “guidance” is a huge spectrum of knowledge sharing mechanisms from informal, peer-to-peer learning to formal, international standards (Corwin et al. 2026).

This site compiles a variety of technical guidance documents associated with planning, design, and construction of nature-based solutions. The site is not intended as a comprehensive resource and is mostly a reflection of my professional areas of practice. Some caveats about what appears here…

A lack of NBS design guidance is often cited as a rationale for not including a feature in a given project (See survey of practitioners by Ostrow et al. (2022)). However, many forms of engineering guidance exist for NBS, and three common themes seem to arise in the style of these documents. The following resources general align with these themes as engineers navigate multi-disciplinary project planning, alternatives analysis, and design of a given feature type. Additionally, I have included some case study databases because everyone I know likes a “go-by” when developing a design.

Overview of common types of design guidance documents.
High-Level Guidance Alternatives Analysis Performance-Based Design
Goals of documents Defining the goals of NBS/NNBF; Thinking in systems; Articulating roles in life cycle execution; Presenting participatory processes Articulating problems; Defining objectives; Considering ranges of alternatives Developing specifications for one alternative; Discrete analytical steps and workflow; Defining performance thresholds
Primary audiences All participants in NBS development Planners and engineers Engineers and operators
Geographic scope Multiple ecosystems connected at the systems scale Defined problem in a given ecosystem type Specific alternative in a given location
Example documents International NNBF Guidelines for Flood-Risk Management; WWF Flood Green Guide Wetlands Engr Handbook (Hayes et al. 2000); Floodplain Connectivity Technical Report USACE rubble mound manual; Floodplain Benching Technical Report

High-level, overview resources

Repositories and hubs of information:

Planning and project initiation manuals:

Alternative Analysis Resources

These are resources for helping engineers and designers navigate alternatives analysis. These documents typically focus on a given problem type (e.g., floodplain management) and present a variety of alternatives with the relative benefits of each described. This list is very incomplete, and I have added links in an ad hoc, unstructured way as I have time.

Performance-based Design of Features

These manuals typically focus on implementing a specific type of feature and include detail on topics like material sizing, specifying geometry, etc.

Regional Design Resources

Some design resources focus on a regional scope rather than a topical one. The manuals are some examples of a regionally focused approach to design guidance.

Case Studies Compilations

Many practitioners like to see example projects and follow these as a template for design. These resources compile case studies into synthesis documents for use by practitioners.