Unveiling the Performance of Nature-Based Solutions with Soil and Plant Indicators

Dear Colleagues,

Nature-based solutions (NBS) have a promising potential to address present and future environmental and societal challenges caused by climate change. In many cases, NBS combine living and inert components, such as plants, soil, and timber, following well-established engineering principles to deliver functions and co-benefits in the form of ecosystem services. Problems such as soil and water pollution, erosion, landslides, and floods can be sustainably managed with effective plant and soil interactions. Even though the concept of NBS is easy to understand by the layperson, e.g., to solve a given problem with the use of vegetation, the uptake of NBS is still low and the full potential of NBS is far from being realised. The latter is partially due to the lack of robust evidence showing the performance of NBS against the problems they are designed for. Substantial work has been carried out over the last decade to define frameworks that help monitor the performance of NBS, but it is still unclear which indicators should be measured and monitored as well as how to assess the performance of a given NBS. This Special Issue aims to collect a series of original contributions including, but not limited to, novel research, critical reviews, perspectives, frameworks, decision support tools, case studies, etc., focusing on soil and plant indicators that are able to convey practical information on the performance of NBS against both environmental and societal problems.

Dr. Alejandro Gonzalez-Ollauri
Prof. Dr. Slobodan Mickovski
Guest Editors

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