The Sonoran Desert ecosystem was degraded by agricultural development and groundwater pumping from the 1930s to 1970s. This project sought to restore the lowland desert by reestablishing perennial shrubs. The team determined historic species composition on a study site, acquiring seeds of those species, introduce them to the site, and provide them with extra water for establishment.
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Nature-Based Solutions Case Study Search
This database contains over 400 implementations of nature-based solutions. Use the filters to identify the case studies most relevant to you.
While all cases here exemplify applications of NBS strategies, they were gathered from various sources and not all were written using the framing of nature-based solutions. To qualify as a nature-based solution, a project must provide benefits to both people and nature. In some instances, the human benefits are present but not emphasized in the case write ups; these cases were included because they still provide useful information to learn from.
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Ah Pah Creek is a fourth order stream with a 16.3 square mile watershed composed entirely of steep, forested land that was degraded by road and highway construction. Yoruk Tribal Fisheries Program (YTFP) and the California Conservation Corps (CCC) collaborated to address riparian restoration needs within the drainage, including extensive riparian conifer planting in its three major tributaries.
Through no-till and cover-crop practices, the soil health management system an Ohio farmer practices restore and re-carbonize soil. The no-till practices increase crop yields by 36-44%, sequesters around 960 kg of carbon per hectare per year, and reduce fertilizer and herbicide use by 75 percent.
Due to extreme flooding events and excessive nitrogen levels in the Cedar River Watershed, the City of Cedar Rapids led the Middle Cedar Partnership Project to reduce nutrient runoff and improve soil health. The partnership collaborated with local farmers, landowners, and conservation organizations to implement strategies to reduce nutrient runoff, mitigate flood risk, and improve soil health.
Sandstone glades of the Southern Cumberland Plateau are rare and unique plant communities exhibiting some of the richest endemic floras in the eastern United States. As a part of larger conservation initiative to rehabilitate and reconnect glade patches with the surrounding forest ecosystem, USFS at William B. Bankhead National Forest conduct a pilot project on a 3-acre glade.
Curtis Prairie at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Arboretum is the site of the world's first ecological restoration project. Begun in 1936 by Dr. Theodore Sperry, the project has been ongoing for more than seventy years and has yielded a wealth of research data about the dynamics of tallgrass prairie ecosystems and the practices most effective in their restoration and management.
Encompassing 100 acres of tallgrass prairie converted into agricultural land and 60 acres of woodland along a creek, Homestead National Historical Park underwent restoration by the National Park Service in 1939 to address severe erosion and improve water quality and soil productivity to support native plants and wildlife.
Intensive campground use at the Grant Grove area of Kings Canyon National Park, California, has compacted the soil and left areas without understory vegetation or tree recruitment. To better inform the restoration of these sites after closure, natural regeneration potential was tested against planting and soil restoration methods.
In response to the increased wildfire risk and spread of invasive species, the Sandia Pueblo Environment Department and ranch staff from Galloping Goat Pumpkin Patch Ranch, with funding from the Forest and Watershed Restoration Act through the New Mexico State Forestry Division, implemented a goat grazing program in 2021.
The Healthy Forest, Health Wildlife project aimed to restore the understories of reclaimed forests. Between 2017 and early 2019, restoration efforts included invasive species removal, native plantings, and constructing animal shelters. In total, 288 shrubs, 564 herbaceous plants, and 348 trees were planted, in addition to herbaceous plant seedling at 46 seeds per square foot and 360 canopy tree seedlings.
In 2017-2018, Sky Island Alliance (SIA) developed and implemented a climate-informed process to restore pollinator population in riparian corridors of the Sky Island region. The goal was to increase pollinator forage, shelter, and continuity across the landscape while promoting biodiversity and ecosystem function.
The Kenilworth Marsh tidal wetland restoration project, led by the National Park Service, aimed to restore areas in Washington, D.C. that were degraded from altered hydrology and contamination. The project team placed 130,000 cubic yards of dredged material to restore hydraulic function of the tidal marshes, installed over 350,000 native plants, and removed invasive purple loosestrife and phragmites.
The Lower Red River Meadow Restoration Project is a multi-phase ecosystem enhancement effort designed to restore a section of the river's natural channel design and revegetate adjacent riparian areas with native species in order to restore natural physical and biological functions and thereby create high quality habitats for fish and wildlife.
The North Simpson Habitat Restoration Project aimed to improve the riprarian habitat on the floodplains of a near-perennial riparian area that came into existence since the 1970s as a consequence of municipal effluent discharge. Numerous native tree, shrub, grass, and forb species were planted in shallow water-harvesting basin to facilitate self-sustaining recovery.
Big sacaton (Sporobolus wrightii) once covered riparian floodplains throughout the southwestern United States and northern Sonora, Mexico. Today, these grasslands occupy less than 5% of their previous range. This restoration project evaluated the role of arbuscular mycorrhizae in the establishment and survival of sacaton at the Nature Conservancy's Patagonia/Sonoita Creek preserve near Patagonia, Arizona.
The 2011 Horseshoe 2 fire caused intense flooding and soil erosion which led to stream sedimentation, infrastructure damage, and degraded watershed conditions in the Chiricahua Mountains region. To address this, partners engaged in a restoration project in burned (Tex Canyon) and unburned (Bar Boot Allotment) watersheds using in-channel loose rock erosion control structures.
USFWS established the Sevilleta Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) to research fire management with prescribed burns in semiarid grasslands at Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge (SNWR). The effect of prescribed burns and timing on organic matter, ammonium, and nitrate was measured. Results suggest that seasonality affects plant species productivity and composition.
This project was initiated in 1995 to develop the scientific basis for ecological restoration of southwestern forests and woodlands at both operational and landscape scales. The project worked specifically in four project areas in the Greater Mount Trumbull Ecosystem within the Grand Canyon/Parashant National Monument: piñon-juniper restoration, piñon-juniper herbaceous revegetation, cheatgrass abatement and monitoring, and ponderosa pine restoration.
Until it was added to Red Rock Canyon State Park in 1989, the South Flat area had been heavily used by off-higway vehicles (OHVs) as a campground with large motor homes, leading to significant vegetation damage. The project goal was to revegetating the area with perennials.
A rancher-led conservation organization in southeastern Arizona is aiming to halt excessive erosion in the Altar Wash. In 2012, they initiated the Elkhorn/Las Delicias Watershed Restoration Demonstration Project (Elk/LD Demo Project), a 13,000-acre project using road rehabilitation, upland restoration, and natural channel design to recreate conditions where natural erosion and deposition processes could resume.