Nature-based solutions are increasingly recognized as effective and multifunctional components of climate-resilient flood protection. While tropical mangroves have received substantial attention, temperate riparian forests, particularly willow systems, offer comparable wave attenuation and biodiversity benefits, yet remain understudied. This study assesses the ecological and protective value of three types of willow floodplain forests: a so-called wild-grown willow forest, a pollard willow forest, and a willow plantation. Using field data from the Biesbosch National Park (the Netherlands), we quantified forest structure, ground-dwelling invertebrate diversity, and modelled wave attenuation under storm scenarios. Structural complexity and biodiversity were highest in the wild-grown forest, with significantly greater invertebrate order richness, larger body sizes, and more heterogeneous canopy architecture. The pollard forest showed the highest wave attenuation efficiency due to their dense, low-lying crown structures. The plantation forest showed lower values across both axes. We integrated these findings into a trade-off model evaluating ecological value, flood protection efficiency, and a 50-year simple cost analysis of each forest type as a hybrid solution alongside traditional dikes. While the pollard forest is the most spatially efficient for flood attenuation, the wild-grown system provides greater ecological value at lower lifecycle cost. Our results underscore the importance of tailoring hybrid flood defense strategies to local priorities - balancing biodiversity, spatial constraints, and economic feasibility. The framework developed here can inform ecosystem-based design in delta regions worldwide, supporting integrated climate adaptation that aligns safety with ecological resilience.

To reduce current and future coastal flood risk, it is critical to better understand how adaptation measures, including nature-based solutions, can reduce that risk. Globally, hybrid coastal defenses, including a combination of coastal vegetation, such as salt marshes and mangroves, with a dike or sea wall, have been highlighted as a promising adaptation measure. Here, we present a global-scale assessment of the potential risk reduction from mangrove restoration in combination with foreshore dike systems under scenarios of climate and socioeconomic change. We provide a quantitative assessment of the benefits in terms of reduced economic damage, exposed population, and poverty exposure. We evaluate mangrove restoration fronting dikes by accounting for wave–vegetation interaction. If mangrove foreshore dike systems were established along coastlines susceptible to flooding, restoration could potentially reduce expected annual damage by US$800 million and reduce expected affected population by 140,000 annually. These values increase under future projections. Our benefit–cost analysis finds mangrove restoration economically viable for about half of the subnational regions assessed (85 to 105 out of 208). At the global scale, the benefit–cost ratio under future conditions ranges from 3 to 6, with a net present value between US$44 billion and US$125 billion. Because absolute risk values and benefit–cost analysis do not differentiate between relative wealth impacts, we also estimated restoration impacts across different wealth levels. We show that restoring mangroves disproportionately benefits people with lower incomes, as they are often more exposed to coastal flooding and located in areas suitable for mangrove restoration. As such, mangrove restoration in low- and middle-income countries could contribute to the resilience of people in poverty.

Mangroves are increasingly recognised for their ecosystem services, including their capacity to store carbon and adapt to climate pressures by stabilising shorelines and acting as storm barriers. To quantify these services, relevant parameters such as mangrove biomass and drag coefficients have been calculated using allometric equations fitted to field measurements of physical mangrove attributes. However, previous research to quantify mangrove attributes has involved time-consuming hand measurements and long processing times associated with terrestrial laser scanning (TLS). To more efficiently capture and process mangrove attributes, such as the density, diameter, height, and projected area of stems and roots, a novel method for collecting mangrove field data using TLS was developed. Recorded TLS data were compared to field measurements conducted in 12 Avicennia marina forests across 10 estuaries and 4 unique estuary typologies. The results demonstrated the reliable estimation of mangrove attributes using TLS and revealed a link between these attributes and estuarine geomorphology. Mangrove stems were accurately identified in all estuary typologies, with attribute estimations more accurate for forests in Drowned River Valleys (DRVs). A sensitivity analysis revealed that 10–20 trees for DRVs and 35–45 trees for barrier estuaries require point cloud processing to characterise a forest area of 400–1300 m² and to achieve convergent stem diameter and tree height results. The method presented herein offers an efficient way to quantify aboveground stem and root attributes and the surface area of mangrove trees. This data can be used to characterise mangrove forests worldwide and provide fundamental attributes for quantifying ecosystem services.

Mangroves have been used for coastal protection in Bangladesh since the 1960s, but their integration with embankment designs has not been fully explored. This paper investigates the effect of existing mangroves on required embankment performance, with a focus on the wave-damping effect of mangroves. Existing mangroves reduce the required thickness of embankment revetment by up to 16–30% in the west, 47–82% in the central region, and 53–77% in the east. Notable mangrove sites include the belt south of polder 45 (Amtali), with an average width of 1.77 km, and the Kukri-Mukri polder, with an average width of 1.82 km. These mangroves reduce the need for thick slope protection, allowing the replacement of concrete revetments with softer materials, such as clay or grass, combined with mangrove foreshore. Additional large mangrove belts are found in Sandwip and Mirersarai. By replacing or reducing revetment requirements, mangrove forests can minimize carbon emissions from construction while providing carbon sequestration and other ecosystem services. This study can inform future sustainable investments in coastal protection systems by identifying areas where mangroves offer the greatest wave-damping benefits, which could be focus of follow-up feasibility studies.

Correction to: Communications Earth & Environmenthttps://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-025-02178-4, published online 3 April 2025 In the version of the article initially published, the title and legend for Fig. 5 was duplicated from Fig. 4; the colour descriptions in the legends to Figs. 3 and 4 were incorrect; the zenodo link in the Data Availability section (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14872179 (2025)) was missing; and the legend to Supplementary Fig. 1 was missing data source citations. The changes are made in the HTML and PDF versions of the article.

The capacity of mangroves to reduce coastal flood risk resulted in legislation for mandatory widths of mangrove greenbelts in several countries with mangrove presence. Prescribed forest widths vary between 50 and 200 m. Here, we performed 216,000 numerical model runs informed by realistic conditions to quantify confidence in wave reduction capacity of mangroves for wind and swell waves. This analysis highlights that tidal flat areas fronting mangrove forests already account for 70% of reduction in wave heights. Within mangrove forests that are below 500 m wide, wave dissipation is strongly dependent on local water levels, wave characteristics and forest density. For forest widths of over 500 m, which constitute 46% of global coastal mangroves, around 75% or more of the incoming wave energy is dissipated. Hence, for relying on mangroves to dampen shorter waves, a new standard should be adopted that strives for mangrove widths of 500 m or more.

The unprecedented resolution of a new 2D modeling approach greatly improves our understanding of how mangroves reduce flood risk.

Riparian forests in front of dikes can dampen incoming waves and thereby contribute to flood safety. In real-scale flume experiments with live pollard willow trees (forming a 40-m-long forest), it was observed that during storm conditions, a maximum reduction of 20 % in incoming wave height could be achieved (van Wesenbeeck, et al., 2022). Notably, this amount of wave damping occurred at a water depth of 3 meters, aligning with the section of the trees with the maximum frontal-surface area. For a larger water depth, measured wave damping however declined. This is potentially partly caused by the natural tapering form of the trees. Typically, trees are characterized by smaller branch diameters and more flexible branches higher up in the canopy (McMahon & Kronauer, 1976); and flexible vegetation mimics are known to dampen less than rigid mimics due to motion (Van Veelen, T, Reeve, & Karunarathna, 2020). Hence, both the frontal-surface area and branch rigidity decrease along the height of the willow trees, potentially leading to less wave damping by the forest when subject to large waves at higher water levels.

The rapid degradation of ecosystems jeopardizes the services they provide. Among the most valuable of these services is protection of coastlines by shoreline ecological communities, such as coral reefs, mangroves and salt marshes. Currently, coastal protection potential of ecosystems is estimated primarily as a function of their spatial extent and type. The degree to which coastal protection depends on aspects of biodiversity within and across these ecosystems is, however, much less explored. Here we synthesize evidence from multiple sources to evaluate whether aspects of biodiversity may influence the degree of coastal protection afforded by coastal ecosystems. We discuss relevant biodiversity theory and the few studies that have investigated how species identity affects shoreline protection, as a first attempt to identify the aspects of biodiversity that are likely to be important in enhancing coastal protection efforts. This synthesis should empower ecologists, conservation scientists and practitioners to test for and then harness the unrealized, but high yield potential, of incorporating biodiversity into coastal defense planning.

Vegetation in front of levees, dikes and seawalls can decrease wave energy and therefore contribute to the safety against flooding. However, wave damping predictions by vegetation are still inaccurate due to measurement and modelling uncertainties. Many studies focused on finding reliable predictive tools using scaled flume tests with vegetation mimics. Scaling down vegetation can however lead to discrepancies with realistic scales, known as scale errors. In this work scaled tests were conducted on 3D-printed elastic replicas of willow trees and compared with real-scale experiments. We identified differences in measured wave dissipation between the scaled hydraulic model (1:10) and its real-scale prototype with 5m high live willow trees under storm conditions (1:1). The maximum measured wave damping (30%) was roughly 1.5 times higher than the real-scale experiments (20%). Following the same trend of the real-scale experiments, this amount of wave height damping declined for larger water levels. Largest effects are argued to be due to increased viscous damping (smaller branch Reynolds numbers) and non-exact flexibility scaling. These significant deviations illustrate that full-scale experiments, although expensive, are still needed to validate the results of scaled experiments for woody vegetation. Alternatively, accounting for these discrepancies can make scaled experiments more reliable and expensive real-scale experiments less needed for wave damping studies on woody vegetation.

Mangrove forests reduce wave attack along tropical and sub-tropical coastlines, decreasing the wave loads acting on coastal protection structures. Mangrove belts seaward of embankments can therefore lower their required height and decrease their slope protection thickness. Wave reduction by mangroves depends on tree frontal surface area and stability against storms, but both aspects are often oversimplified or neglected in coastal protection designs. Here we present a framework to evaluate how mangrove belts influence embankment designs, including mangrove growth over time and failure by overturning and trunk breakage. This methodology is applied to Sonneratia apetala mangroves seaward of embankments in Bangladesh, considering forest widths between 10 and 1000 m (cross-shore). For water depths of 5 m, wave reduction by mangrove forests narrower than 1 km mostly affects the slope protection and the bank erodibility, whereas the required embankment height is less influenced by mangroves. Sonneratia apetala trees experience a relative maximum in wave attenuation capacity at 10 years age, due to their large submerged canopy area. Once trees are more than 20 years old, their canopy is emergent, and most wave attenuation is caused by trunk and roots. Canopy emergence exposes mangroves to wind loads, which are much larger than wave loads, and can cause tree failure during cyclones. These results stress the importance of including tree surface area and stability models when predicting coastal protection by mangroves.

Human-induced land subsidence causes many coastal areas to sink centimetres per year, exacerbating relative sea level rise (RSLR). While cities combat this problem through investment in coastal infrastructure, rural areas are highly dependent on the persistence of protective coastal ecosystems, such as mangroves and marshes. To shed light on the future of low-lying rural areas in the face of RSLR, we here studied a 20-km-long rural coastline neighbouring a sinking city in Indonesia, reportedly sinking with 8–20 cm per year. By measuring water levels in mangroves and quantifying floor raisings of village houses, we show that, while villages experienced rapidly rising water levels, their protective mangroves experience less rapid changes in RSLR. Individual trees were able to cope with RSLR rates of 4.3 (95% confidence interval 2.3–6.3) cm per year through various root adaptations when sediment was available locally. However, lateral retreat of the forest proved inevitable, with RSLR rates up to four times higher than foreshore accretion, forcing people from coastal communities to migrate as the shoreline retreated. Whereas local RSLR may be effectively reduced by better management of groundwater resources, the effects of RSLR described here predict a gloomy prospect for rural communities that are facing globally induced sea level rise beyond the control of local or regional government.

A review of ecological, social, engineering, and integrative approaches to define and apply resilience thinking is presented and comparatively discussed in the context of watershed management. Knowledge gaps are identified through an assessment of this literature and compilation of a set of research questions through stakeholder engagement activities. We derive a proposed research agenda describing key areas of inquiry such as watershed resilience variables and their interactions; leveraging watershed natural properties, processes, and dynamics to facilitate and enable resilience; analytical methods and tools including monitoring, modeling, metrics, and scenario planning, and their applications to watersheds at different spatial and temporal scales, and infusing resilience concepts as core values in watershed adaptive management.

Management and restoration of mangrove forests to protect coasts are promoted in many countries, including Indonesia. Indonesian mangrove forests are actively restored and managed by local communities for their ecosystem services, including coastal protection. Whether community-based mangrove management (CBMM) is effective is still debated. Our study analysed the effectiveness of different CBMM practices in four Central Javan communities by analysing the capacity of their mangrove forests to protect against coastal hazards. We used complementary interviews, field assessments and literature reviews to collect the necessary information. The overall CBMM performance and success significantly differed for each community's mangrove rehabilitation effort and the resulting coastal protection service. Of the four communities, Bedono performed best in terms of mangrove coverage, forest structure and restored coastal protection service. This is explained by multiple factors, such as application of long-term and integrated CBMM approaches, involving appropriate maintenance and additional measures to reduce wave energy. Our results can help governments, practitioners and communities to better understand the factors that contribute to CBMM's success and failure when restoring and managing mangrove forests and protecting coasts.

Global change processes such as sea level rise and the increasing frequency of severe storms threaten many coastlines around the world and trigger the need for interventions to make these often densely-populated areas safer. Mangroves could be implemented in Nature-Based Flood Defense, provided that we know how to conserve and restore these ecosystems at those locations where they are most needed. In this study, we investigate how best to restore mangroves along an aquaculture coast that is subject to land-subsidence, comparing two common mangrove restoration methods: 1) mangrove restoration by planting and 2) Ecological Mangrove Restoration (EMR); the assistance of natural mangrove regeneration through mangrove habitat restoration. Satellite data revealed that historically, landward mangrove expansion into the active pond zone has mainly occurred through mangrove planting on pond bunds. However, there is potential to create greenbelts along waterways by means of EMR measures, as propagule trap data from the field revealed that propagules of pioneer species were up to 21 times more abundant in creeks of the pond zone than near their source in the coastal zone. This was especially true during the prevailing onshore winds of the wet-season, suggesting that smart seasonal sluice gate management could help to efficiently trap seeds in target ponds. In the coastal zone, field experiments showed that permeable brushwood dams, aimed at expanding mangrove habitat, could not sufficiently overcome subsidence rates to increase natural mangrove expansion in the seaward direction, but did significantly increase the survival of already established (planted) seedlings compared to more wave-exposed sites. The survival and growth rate of EMR-supported plantings greatly varied between species. Out of the four planted species, Rhizophora mucronata had the highest survival (67%) but the lowest growth rate. Whereas the pioneer species Avicennia alba and Avicennia marina had lower survival rates (resp. 35 and 21%), but significantly higher growth rates, even resulting in fruiting young trees within a 16-month timeframe. Overall, we conclude that 1) EMR has potential in the pond zone, given that propagules were observed to reach well into the backwaters; and 2) that mangrove recovery in the coastal zone may be facilitated even at very challenging coastal sites by combining EMR with the planting of pioneer species.

Due to rising sea levels and projected socio-economic change, global coastal flood risk is expected to increase in the future. To reduce this increase in risk, one option is to reduce the probability or magnitude of the hazard through the implementation of structural, Nature-based or hybrid adaptation measures. Nature-based Solutions in coastal areas have the potential to reduce impacts of climate change and can provide a more sustainable and cost-effective alternative to structural measures. In this paper, we present the first global scale assessment of the benefits of conserving foreshore vegetation as a means of adaptation to future projections of change in coastal flood risk. In doing so, we extend the current knowledge on the economic feasibility of implementing global scale Nature-based Solutions. We show that globally foreshore vegetation can contribute to a large decrease in both absolute and relative flood risk (13% of present-day and 8.5% of future conditions in 2080 of global flood risk). Although this study gives a first proxy of the flood risk reduction benefits of conserving foreshore vegetation at the global scale, it shows promising results for including Nature-based and hybrid adaptation measures in coastal adaptation schemes.

Nature-based coastal protection is increasingly recognised as a potentially sustainable and cost-effective solution to reduce coastal flood risk. It uses coastal ecosystems such as mangrove forests to create resilient designs for coastal flood protection. However, to use mangroves effectively as a nature-based measure for flood risk reduction, we must understand the biophysical processes that govern risk reduction capacity through mangrove ecosystem size and structure. In this perspective, we evaluate the current state of knowledge on local physical drivers and ecological processes that determine mangrove functioning as part of a nature-based flood defence. We show that the forest properties that comprise coastal flood protection are well-known, but models cannot yet pinpoint how spatial heterogeneity of the forest structure affects the capacity for wave or surge attenuation. Overall, there is relatively good understanding of the ecological processes that drive forest structure and size, but there is a lack of knowledge on how daily bed-level dynamics link to long-term biogeomorphic forest dynamics, and on the role of combined stressors influencing forest retreat. Integrating simulation models of forest structure under changing physical (e.g. due to sea-level change) and ecological drivers with hydrodynamic attenuation models will allow for better projections of long-term natural coastal protection.

Worldwide, communities are facing increasing flood risk, due to more frequent and intense hazards and rising exposure through more people living along coastlines and in flood plains. Nature-based Solutions (NbS), such as mangroves, and riparian forests, offer huge potential for adaptation and risk reduction. The capacity of trees and forests to attenuate waves and mitigate storm damages receives massive attention, especially after extreme storm events. However, application of forests in flood mitigation strategies remains limited to date, due to lack of real-scale measurements on the performance under extreme conditions. Experiments executed in a large-scale flume with a willow forest to dissipate waves show that trees are hardly damaged and strongly reduce wave and run-up heights, even when maximum wave heights are up to 2.5 m. It was observed for the first time that the surface area of the tree canopy is most relevant for wave attenuation and that the very flexible leaves limitedly add to effectiveness. Overall, the study shows that forests can play a significant role in reducing wave heights and run-up under extreme conditions. Currently, this potential is hardly used but may offer future benefits in achieving more adaptive levee designs.

The last years, capacity of vegetation to reduce wave impact is receiving considerable attention. To predict wave attenuation processes within vegetation fields reliable estimates of vegetation parameters are needed. This proves to be difficult for woody vegetation as it consists of complex branch structures, characterized by varying branch densities, diameters and angles. State of the art physical and numerical models effectively use a single value for the diameter, b _v and density, N of vegetation, which is unrepresentative for complex vegetation, such as trees. Trees can be better described by the projected frontal-surface area, A _v. Hence, this work compares methods to quantify the A _v in space for a pollard willow forest, and determines suitability of these methods for predicting wave attenuation using a spectral wave model (SWAN). We use data from manual measurements and Terrestrial Laser Scans (TLS), to estimate the vertical distribution of A _v; and data from large-scale flume experiments performed on a willow forest to verify model sensitivity to A _v inferences. As a baseline for comparison, tree models that describe the structure of the trees in various degrees of complexity are compiled. The most realistic tree model is used to quantify potential errors in TLS and basic manual measurements of N and b _v. An initial comparison shows that the TLS data underestimates A _v, which indicates that conducting manual measurements is more suitable to quantify a homogeneous forest. We found that the TLS suffers from shadowing effects (i.e., blockage of laser beams) and we recommend to apply a correction factor to improve its measurements. Furthermore, we identified the impact that the different methods to determine A _v have on the estimation of wave attenuation using SWAN; in addition we verified the model results with data from large-scale flume experiments performed on the willow forest. The modeled sensitivity tests indicate large differences in wave attenuation and, consequently, a wide range (0.94–1.70) of bulk drag coefficients, (Formula presented.), for the various methods applied. This shows the variation of outcome between measuring methods and highlights the importance of stating the selected method for reliable frontal-surface area estimations, and consequently for reliable wave attenuation predictions.