Water is a powerful force in human well-being and safety, and through history, humans have developed ways to corral, redirect, and store it. Modern engineers and city planners have especially relied on conventional infrastructure, such as levees, seawalls and dams, to ensure that water exists in the places that humans need it—and not it the places humans don’t (like their basements).

However, these concrete solutions have dire consequences for the aquatic ecosystems that call natural bodies of water home, disrupting their ability to migrate, reproduce, and perform any myriad of functions that are needed to survive. Due to this and many other factors, freshwater species have declined by over 83% since 1970, and many native species are at risk of extinction.

Recently, natural infrastructure, or the use of tools like marshes, levee setbacks, and dam removals in conjunction with or in place of conventional infrastructure, has been touted as a way to both manage water resources, and to help preserve our natural systems.

“[Natural infrastructure] is being spoken about like it’s a silver bullet that can meet infrastructure needs, meet societal needs and result in environmental benefits of conservation,” explained Suman Jumani, a postdoctoral fellow at the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center. “At the same time, we’ve seen that freshwater biodiversity is declining at alarming rates across the world, and that freshwater species are being lost at rates more than twice that of terrestrial or marine species.”

However, a recent paper that Jumani contributed to as part of an interdisciplinary Network for Engineering with Nature team from the University of Georgia and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers called for greater investigation into just how natural infrastructure can help support biodiversity.

“For this paper, we examined whether this assumption that natural infrastructure checks all these boxes and achieves biodiversity conservation, whether that assumption holds true, particularly within the freshwater realm where species are particularly at risk. When we looked into the literature, we were surprised to see that there was very little evidence to support this claim,” Jumani said.

While there may be little evidence, the authors aren’t claiming that natural infrastructure is unlikely to be supportive to biodiversity. However, they are calling for a strategic, scientific approach to investigating the advantages and limitations in how natural infrastructure can support freshwater biodiversity, and believe that using a methods-based approach will ensure that natural infrastructure solutions perform to their best capabilities.

Charles Van Rees, the lead author on the paper, laid out some of the challenges that researchers must overcome in determining the effectiveness of natural infrastructure for supporting biodiversity.

“The biggest current challenges are a lack of organized data on the biodiversity impacts of different NBS designs and methods, and specific attention to the need for making natural infrastructure contribute to conservation goals. In other words, we don’t know enough about the potential positive impacts that these emerging methods of water management could have. Furthermore, people are so busy being (perhaps very rightfully) excited about natural infrastructure that they aren’t stopping to ask what they can actually do for nature. Just because they are nature-based does not mean that they will benefit biodiversity. That will require careful study and very intentional design and management to bring to fruition.”

A specific focus on biodiversity goals is especially important. Conservation is one of the least funded areas of research in the United States, with spending reaching only $140 billion a year, compared to an estimated need for up to $900 billion a year—despite a widescale biodiversity crisis with far-reaching impacts.

“This work and other research by the biodiversity working group at N-EWN is focused on the grand goal of having nature-based solutions deliver on their promises of enhancing and restoring nature as well as achieving human goals,” Van Rees explained. “In other words, we want to make sure that NBS projects can be nature-positive. The exciting potential here is that if natural infrastructure projects get mainstreamed and implemented at huge global scales, they could make a massive difference for conservation goals. Just think about the budgets–the amount of money spent globally on infrastructure every year is 10+ times larger than what we spend on restoring and protecting ecosystems.”

The researchers also emphasized the importance of incorporating interdisciplinary perspectives into this work.

“For me as an engineer, this research was a huge learning experience,” said Liya Abera, a postdoctoral fellow at the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center. “It’s very clear that natural infrastructure implementation requires interdisciplinary knowledge. Conserving freshwater biodiversity is not an issue that needs to be addressed only by ecologists or freshwater biologists. Engineers can play a part by incorporating natural infrastructure in their new developments or by retrofitting designs. Engineers and ecologists might have different goals, but by implementing natural infrastructure and collaborating, we make sure that they’re all met.”

Read the research directly from the source: find it here.

Written by Sarah Buckleitner

Contacts: Liya Abera, Suman Jumani and Charles Van Rees