To make good decisions, researchers and practitioners need high-quality, consistent, and accessible forest data. Pilot forest accounts are one of the first steps in tracking ecosystems services, demonstrating how accounts can be created using available data and determining what questions they can help answer.

It’s critical for North Carolina agencies to focus their limited resources where they can have the greatest impact in recovering from Hurricane Helene. This analysis helps identify the species and locations most likely to have been severely affected, allowing agencies to prioritize on-the-ground assessments and recovery efforts where they are most needed.

Recent federal updates and activities modernizing regulation have elevated the importance of ecosystem services and clarified guidance for accounting for their value. These changes underscore the crucial role of ecosystem services in federal benefit–cost analysis, provide clear entry points that make it simplify and enhance transparency for agencies and stakeholders to include ecosystem services in benefit–cost analysis, and document advances in the literature demonstrating that ecosystem services can be credibly and robustly included in such analyses.

This report empirically examines the determinants of private participation in flood mitigation programs that use a payment for ecosystem services (PES) framework and suggests improved PES program designs and enhancements to their flood mitigation effectiveness. It offers evidence suggesting income from farming and potential participants' past experiences with PES programs may increase participation in programs aiming to mitigate flooding and that in turn could reduce economic damages from flooding impacts.

Despite growing interest and investment in nature-based solutions such as living shorelines in the United States, it has been difficult to expand their use. One major hurdle is permitting challenges. Florida, North Carolina, and Virginia are three states where living shoreline installations have increased. We examined what policy conditions exist in these locations to enable project permitting, as well as how to address any remaining hurdles.

Nature-based solutions (NBS) address societal challenges by managing ecosystems to provide environmental and human benefits. This report assesses 27 publicly accessible databases on NBS research and projects, highlighting their utility as well as limitations and gaps in coverage. Key recommendations include making databases downloadable, adding standardized geographic and project attributes, and improving measurement of effectiveness. Better data accessibility and consistency are essential for developing design standards and scaling up NBS implementation.

Debt-for-nature swaps on a grand scale could slow climate change and promote economic growth in the Global South.

Debt distress, biodiversity loss and climate change are interconnected crises for developing countries. A task force of multilateral development banks and environmental institutions is convening a task force to establish a framework to ameliorate these crises by reforming debt-for-nature swaps. The authors of this Policy Forum identify four reforms that should underpin the new framework.

Mangrove ecosystems provide numerous benefits to both people and nature, including providing important habitat for wildlife species, nursery habitat for fish and shellfish, recreational opportunities, and protection for coastal communities. This evidence library synthesizes the scientific literature and expert knowledge to share information on what is known—and not known—about how storm-induced changes to mangrove ecosystems might impact mangrove ecosystem services.

This comprehensive resource, created in collaboration with the US Department of the Interior, is a first-of-its-kind reference for implementing nature-based solutions. Nature-based solutions are actions to protect, sustainably manage or restore natural or modified ecosystems to address societal challenges—including climate change—in ways that help people and the environment. Examples cited in the Roadmap range from urban stormwater and runoff management to prescribed burns to living shorelines to restoration of various ecosystems.