South Carolina Nature-Based Solutions Database

Nature-based solutions (NBS) is a term used to describe interventions that help protect, manage, and restore the environment while also providing tangible benefits for people (Kabisch et al., 2016),(Cohen-Shacham et al., 2016). One of the largest strengths of NBS over alternative solutions is their integrative, systemic approach to addressing multiple sustainable development goals at once (Chausson et al., 2020), (Nesshover et al., 2017). Despite the number of studies that emphasize this attribute of NBS, there remains a lack of evidence clarifying their contribution of interdisciplinary benefits (Goodwin et al., 2023), (Huang et al., 2020). Rather, the evidence for NBS is scattered across disciplines in the physical, natural, and social sciences, leaving a gap of understanding about the synergies and tradeoffs between different socioeconomic, ecological, and environmental benefits (Seddon, 2022), (Ruangpan et al., 2024). This disconnected evidence hinders the uptake of NBS and makes it challenging to predict their overall effectiveness and optimal locations for addressing various issues (Goodwin et al., 2023), (Debele et al., 2023).

There is a critical need for an improved evidence base, informed by scientific, practitioner, local, and indigenous knowledge, to promote equitable long-term solutions. While there have been recent endeavors to create this type of database for global NBS examples (Chausson et al., 2020),(Debele et al., 2023), it can be difficult to generalize lessons learned about effectiveness for regional applications. Most NBS are developed by local entities with idiosyncratic purposes specific to the ecosystem, climate, culture, and local governance pathways of that region. For this reason, it may be productive to focus comparisons of approaches and outcomes within a relatively homogeneous region.

To help amend this gap, I constructed a database of NBS specific to South Carolina (SC), the state where I am from. Local practitioners in SC have recently been gaining interest in the application of NBS to address issues that commonly impact SC communities such as flooding, poor water quality, and biodiversity loss. This can be seen through programs like the Nature-Based Exchange (NBE): a collaborative effort started in 2022 to connect an array of SC experts from a variety of disciplines related to NBS through a series of workshops. These workshops aimed to close the gap between conceptual ideas and practical plans for NBS in SC by synthesizing existing knowledge, aligning it with opportunities and barriers within the state, and creating practical and equitable steps for implementation. One of the barriers identified to NBS implementation was the “absence of a central database” which would improve education and public attitudes towards these solutions. Since there are currently zero NBS case studies from SC in any of the major global NBS databases, this further adds to the need for the creation of a NBS database for the state.

I collected information about NBS in SC from a vast array of sources, including but not limited to publications, watershed plans, reports, company websites, citizen science survey inputs, design manuals, low impact development databases, and mitigation banking databases. I established database requirements in conjunction with The Nature Conservancy to determine which attributes of NBS are most important to collect. The refined attributes include type(s) of NBS in the project, benefit(s) aimed to achieve by the project, approximate start and end date of construction, full list of project partners, scale, latitude/longitude, source of project, type of source, date of source, cost, type of funding source, specific name of funding source, permit and maintenance information, challenges faced, and a short description of the project.

To convey the findings of my database and make the data more accessible to SC practitioners and residents, I created a public ArcGIS Storymap with highlighted case studies and interactive data dashboards. Since publication of the storymap in August 2024, it has already been shared widely by the Nature-Based Exchange, used as an assignment to explore NBS sites for a graduate level marine science course, and been utilized in the planning for the Salkehatchie River Basin by the SC Resilient Coastal Communities Collaborative Program.