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Nature-Based Solutions Tools Search

This database contains over 400 tools and resources that can help guide practitioners at various stages of the nature-based solutions project cycle. Use the filters to identify the tools and resources most useful to you.

You can filter the full list by the habitat type you’re working in, the nature-based solutions strategy you want to use, the project phase you are looking for help with, or the type of tool/resource you’re looking for.

The tools and resources shown here were gathered through a robust search of both federal and non-federal sources. We recognize that this library will never be completely comprehensive, but if you know of an important missing tool or resource, please email nesp@duke.edu.

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Encompassing all aspects of large wood designs, this guide covers their geomorphic, hydrological, and ecological considerations. The authors also discuss the risks involved, regulatory considerations, and monitoring.

NBS Strategies:

Viewing living shorelines through the nature-based solutions paradigm, this guidebook provides techniques to create living shorelines. The guidebook contains additional information about the permitting steps and funding opportunities available.

This technical document delves into the hydrodynamic, terrestrial, and ecological parameters that impact living shoreline creation projects. Additional topics include regulatory considerations and invasive species management.

This training encompasses the technical aspects of implementing and maintaining living shoreline creation projects. The authors provide in-depth design guidelines and information about the permitting process.

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The authors show how river restoration centers around restoring the hydrological processes that make a riverine system successful. The guide focuses on low-tech and cost-efficient solutions, including beaver dam analogs and assisted wood accumulation.

This guide explains how beaver management fits into larger river and stream restoration projects. Topics covered include designing BDAs, implementing projects, and restoring river health.

Review of salt marsh restoration practices with a special emphasis on adaptative management for sea level rise. Topics covered include erosion reduction, modelling sea level rise, and engineering considerations for salt marsh restoration.

Focusing on the policy tools needed to implement an assisted marsh migration project, this website helps weigh the social and ecological concerns related to marsh migration. Additional topics covered include regulatory considerations, infrastructure removal, and planning tools.

NBS Strategies:

Beavers are an integral part of stream ecology, but also can create hazards. This helps managers mitigate hazards while maximizing benefits from beavers by analyzing mitigation measures and reintroduction strategies.

Explains how built wetlands function, project design, construction, operations, and monitoring.

NBS Strategies:

This guide helps project managers make sense of the variety of marsh migration modelling software available. The authors discuss the pros and cons of using models as well as the factors the determine marsh migration.

Relevant phase:
NBS Strategies:

This best management practices guide describes practices for retaining or improving habitat connectivity for amphibians and reptiles in California.

This database provides information on control techniques, examples of projects, method effectiveness, and handbooks/other resources.

Focusing on the technical aspects of building BDAs, this guide walks practitioners through the steps of building a BDA. Filled with helpful diagrams and pictures, the geomorphic and hydrologic implications of beaver management are also discussed.

Relevant phase:

Details on stormwater control practices, including many NBS. Includes design and construction guidelines, operations and maintenance information, assessing project performance, and case studies.

Relevant phase:

Ecological and engineering principles for restoring wetlands, including site assessment, design and construction, vegetation establishment, and monitoring and ongoing management.

The National Mitigation Investment Strategy is a single national strategy for advancing mitigation investment to reduce risks posed by and increase the nation’s resilience to natural hazards, such as sea level rise, droughts, tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, wildfires, and earthquakes. This portfolio showcases mitigation projects to provide practitioners with examples of activities that integrate the Investment Strategy’s goals and reflect the guiding principles of the Disaster Recovery Reform Act of 2018 (DRRA).

Relevant phase:

The purpose of this document is to provide a resource that communities can use to identify and evaluate a range of potential mitigation actions for reducing risk to natural hazards and disasters. The focus of this document is mitigation, which is action taken to reduce or eliminate long-term risk to hazards. The document discusses 16 natural hazards, and describes mitigation strategies across several different aspects of mitigation within them. These include regulations requirements through FEMA, education prorgams, and natural systems protection (NBS) ideas. 

Relevant phase:

This monitoring protocol includes an optional implementation data sheet to track project implementation, landowner satisfaction, and landowner compliance for offices with no standardized implementation monitoring protocol, an effectiveness assessment data sheet to assess progress toward meeting the specific biological and/or physical objectives established for a project, and guidance and data sheets for collecting and documenting digital images to substantiate assessments of project success. 

Relevant phase:

This page links ot the social vulnerability layer of the national risk index map. As a consequence enhancing risk component of the National Risk Index, a Social Vulnerability score and rating represent the relative level of a community’s social vulnerability compared to all other communities at the same level. A community’s Social Vulnerability score measures its national rank or percentile. A higher Social Vulnerability score results in a higher Risk Index score.

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