This tool aims to support the identification of areas with suitable conditions for implementing blue Nature-based Solutions

Nature-based Solutions (NBS) comprise various ecosystem-based approaches (e.g., ecosystem protection and ecosystem-based management) that work with and enhance nature to address multiple challenges, including biodiversity loss and climate change impacts. To maximise the success of blue NBS in helping us face those challenges, we need to carefully consider how to design and where to implement them. 

To help understand where favourable conditions are for implementing interventions in marine and coastal ecosystems, MaCoBioS developed a new Multi-tiered Approach to assess Suitability for NBS (MAS-NBS). MAS-NBS provides a framework to identify suitable areas in which to implement blue NBS by combining environmental, social, economic, and governance dimensions. The framework is composed of three tiers that build upon each other and use different scales of analysis:

• Tier 1 concerns the environmental conditions that allow the survival of the ecosystem of interest now and in the future. This is based on the physical, chemical, and biological factors affecting the presence of the foundation species that form the ecosystem, and their environmental tolerance. In this tier, future climate scenarios are used to predict likely changes in areas where ecosystems can, or could, occur based on these environmental requirements. This level can be performed at different scales (e.g., local, regional, national).
• Tier 2 adds information about the endogenic (e.g., nutrient input, dissolved oxygen, shipping traffic, coastal development, etc.) and exogenic (e.g., sea surface temperature, salinity, currents, etc.) pressures that are known to affect ecosystem condition. By overlapping areas where ecosystems are at greater risk from these pressures and areas with the most suitable environmental conditions for ecosystem persistence, we can identify priority areas for intervention. Different methods can be used for risk assessment: within MaCoBioS we developed MARITIME to do this. To combine data from Tiers 1 and 2, the same scale should be used.
• Tier 3 incorporates the social, economic, and governance dimensions that determine whether an intervention can be implemented in a particular area, what the intervention could be, and how successful it might be. Coast-Adapt and PBI-Support have been designed to help integrate these dimensions with the local environmental context to identify appropriate adaptation strategies and potential blue NBS options. This tier requires a more detailed scale of analysis and site-specific information.

Within MaCoBioS we have applied the two first tiers of MAS-NBS to two important ecosystems in our ecoregions, namely seagrass in the Western Mediterranean and kelp forest in Northern Europe. You can view the results of these applications in our dedicated WebGIS.