Nature-Based Solutions

NESP engages both public and private individuals and organizations to enhance collaboration within the ecosystem services community, including on nature-based solutions. It aims to strengthen coordination of policy, market implementation, and research at the national level.

The Nicholas Institute, partnering with The Harte Research Institute and The Nature Conservancy, works to standardize metrics of restoration success by developing ecosystem service logic models with stakeholders from the five Gulf states, federal agencies, and technical experts.

The North Carolina Natural and Working Lands Action Plan, part of the North Carolina Climate Risk Assessment and Resilience Plan, was created in response to Executive Order 80 to identify opportunities for North Carolina’s natural and working lands.

Pocosins are a unique type of wetland found in the North Carolina coastal plain. They provide valuable wildlife habitat and store large amounts of carbon in their deep peat soils. There is increasing interest in pocosin restoration as a nature-based solution that will benefit both natural ecosystems and people.

Coastal areas draw many visitors and full-time residents with their scenic beauty and recreational opportunities, but they’re vulnerable to many stressors.

Coastal habitats in the United States provide significant environmental, social, and economic benefits, including shoreline protection, carbon sequestration, food provision, and recreational and cultural services.

Increasingly, restoration funders and practitioners are paying attention to how coastal restoration projects affect people and communities.The GEMS project identified metrics for social and economic outcomes of coastal restoration, including employment, local economy, recreation, food provision, and mental health benefits. We are now working to apply the GEMS methods for assessing fishing and related outcomes to support restoration decisions made by NOAA’s Damage Assessment Remediation and Restoration (DARRP).

The Resilience Roadmap makes recommendations for how to build greater climate resilience in the United States through federal action.

Conservation organizations and land trusts in North Carolina are increasingly focused on how their work can 1) contribute to humans’ and ecosystems’ resilience and adaptation to climate change, and 2) directly mitigate climate change through carbon storage and sequestration.

The database is intended to assist those interested in coastal resilience in the southeastern United States to quickly find others doing related work, in order to facilitate collaboration and connection.

NESP has created a set of resources for the natural resource management community which are intended to establish an ecosystem services framework that is flexible, while being standardized, intuitive, and credible.

Research at the Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment & Sustainability examines the economic and scientific challenges that need to be addressed in order to determine whether payments for storing coastal blue carbon may one day help conserve mangroves, seagrass meadows, and salt marshes, and keep them from being converted to other uses and releasing their stores of greenhouse gas.