Laboratory performance assessment of low-cost water level sensor for field monitoring in the tropics.

As Water Sensitive Urban Design (WSUD) is a key strategy in integrated urban water management worldwide, there is a need for robust monitoring of WSUD systems. Being economical and flexible for operation and communication, low-cost sensor systems show great potential to mainstream digital water management. Yet, such systems are insufficiently tested, casting doubt on the reliability of their measurements.

Nature-based solutions for improving food security: A systematic global review.

Nature-based solutions (NBS) have been promoted as a holistic way to solve a variety of societal issues while benefiting biodiversity at the same time. To date, applications of NBS approaches that help ensure food security have yet been systematically reviewed. In this paper, we critically review the specific NBS for food security, highlighting their limitations, to provide recommendations that promote their applications for improving global food security.

Dataset of urban nature games to aid integrating nature-based solutions in urban planning.

This dataset of Urban Nature Games provides information, ratings, and categorizations of different types of games that incorporate concepts of urban planning and ecosystem services or nature-based solutions. It consists of games retrieved from systematic searches on various search engines and public databases, using keywords related to: urban design and planning; ecosystem services and nature-based solutions; and game-based approaches. Recorded meta information includes game names, developers, links to each game's documentation, relevant publications, as well as generic playing information such as play duration, number of players, target group, distribution format, play mode, and costs.

New paths for modelling freshwater nature futures.

Freshwater ecosystems are exceptionally rich in biodiversity 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.

Evaluating urban greening scenarios for urban heat mitigation: a spatially explicit approach.

Urban green infrastructure, especially trees, are widely regarded as one of the most effective ways to reduce urban temperatures in heatwaves and alleviate the adverse impacts of extreme heat events 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.

Producing valuable information from hydrologic models of nature-based solutions for water.

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.

An ecosystem service perspective on urban nature, physical activity, and health.

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.

Blue-Green Infrastructure for Flood and Water Quality Management in Southeast Asia: Evidence and Knowledge Gaps.

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 diversity 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.

Modeling seasonal water yield for landscape management: Applications in Peru and Myanmar.

A common objective of watershed management programs is to secure water supply, especially during the dry season. To develop such programs in contexts of low data and resource availability, program managers need tools to understand the effect of landscape management on the seasonal water balance. However, the performance of simple, parsimonious models is poorly understood.

The value of hydrologic information for watershed management programs: The case of Camboriú, Brazil.

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.

Global modeling of nature's contributions to people.

The magnitude and pace of global change demand rapid assessment of nature and its contributions to people. We present a fine-scale global modeling of current status and future scenarios for several contributions: water quality regulation, coastal risk reduction, and crop pollination. We find that where people's needs for nature are now greatest, nature's ability to meet those needs is declining.

National scale evaluation of the InVEST nutrient retention model in the United Kingdom.

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.

Life cycle assessment needs predictive spatial modelling for biodiversity and ecosystem services.

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 biodiversity. We present advances for LCA that integrate spatially explicit modelling of land change and ecosystem services in a Land-Use Change Improved (LUCI)-LCA.

Sediment delivery modeling in practice: Comparing the effects of watershed characteristics and data resolution across hydroclimatic regions.

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), climate (tropical, subtropical, mediterranean), topography, and land use/land cover.

Incorporating climate change into ecosystem service assessments and decisions: a review.

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.

A new approach to modeling the sediment retention service (InVEST 3.0): Case study of the Cape Fear catchment, North Carolina, USA.

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.

Addendum: shiue, I.; et Al. 2014 future Earth young scientists conference on integrated science and knowledge co-production for ecosystems and human well-being. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public health 2014, 11, 11553-11558.

The authors would like to add the following affiliation for Peter Søgaard Jørgensen of paper [1]:   8 International Network of Next-Generation Ecologists, Universitetsparken 15, Building 3, Copenhagen 2100, Denmark[...

2014 Future Earth Young Scientists Conference on integrated science and knowledge co-production for ecosystems and human well-being.

Effective integration in science and knowledge co-production is a challenge that crosses research boundaries, climate regions, languages and cultures. Early career scientists are crucial in the identification of, and engagement with, obstacles and opportunities in the development of innovative solutions to complex and interconnected problems. On 25-31 May 2014, International Council for Science and International Social Science Council, in collaboration with the International Network of Next-Generation Ecologists and Institute for New Economic Thinking: Young Scholars Initiative, assembled a group of early career researchers with diverse backgrounds and research perspectives to reflect on and debate relevant issues around ecosystems and human wellbeing in the transition towards green economy, funded by the German Research Foundation, at Villa Vigoni, Italy.

The impact of stormwater source-control strategies on the (low) flow regime of urban catchments.

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.